Engineers: Norris sewer upgrades to cost $5.5 million or more
Norris will have to spend about $5.5 million – or even more – to fix problems with stormwater runoff overwhelming the city’s sanitary sewer system during heavy rains, the City Council was told Monday night.
Engineers with Cannon & Cannon Consulting Engineers of Knoxville outlined to the council members a plan to make the repairs required by the state of Tennessee, with an estimated completion date of late 2028.
The price tag for the bulk of the work was estimated to be $5.488 million, with a potential bill as high as $6.6 million, the engineers said.
There’s also the possibility the city would have to install a 750,000-gallon holding tank for stormwater runoff, at a price of more than $2.1 million.
Money to pay for the upgrades will come from a “combination of grants, debt and increased sewer rates” to customers, Mayor Chris Mitchell said after the meeting.
No action was taken Monday night, but the council will meet in special session at 6 p.m. today (Wednesday, May 11) to approve the plan, which must be submitted to the state no later than May 17 to avoid paying more fines for sewage environmental violations.
The city is under pressure from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s Division of Water Resources to file the plan to address the stormwater runoff issue, or end up paying $23,460 in fines – or more – for violations of state regulations regarding wastewater discharges into rivers and streams.
Norris already has paid $4,692 of that fine to the state, and would be on the hook for the rest of it unless its remediation plan is filed on time and is acceptable to TDEC.
The city contracted with Cannon & Cannon engineers for $300,000 to study the sanitary sewer system to find out where stormwater is entering the system, which can add a million gallons of water per day to the system and overwhelm the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
Because fixing the problem will be a multi-year, multi-million-dollar process, the city must find ways to raise the money – but under state law, is not allowed to use money collected through property taxes.
Instead, the city must get grants and/or borrow money to pay for the upgrades, and then pay off the loans using higher sewer rates for customers. About three-fourths of Norris water customers – around 600 – also have sewer service, and would have to pay the higher rates, the mayor said. He said water rates would not be affected.
The estimates in the plan submitted to the council Monday night don’t include a possible replacement of the city’s aging wastewater treatment plant, which was built in 1936 and last upgraded in the 1960s.
The plant, just off East Norris Road near Andersonville Highway, is designed to process up to about 200,000 gallons of wastewater per day, and normally gets about 100,000 gallons per day, the council was told.
But when it rains, that can push beyond 1 million gallons, and most of that gets bypassed around the treatment plant and discharged into Buffalo Creek, at a point south of Andersonville Highway, near the Chunky Monkey restaurant.
While that dumped water does get treated with chlorine to get rid of bacteria, the chemical pollutants in it are not removed, the city Water Commission said.
The mayor received a “Director’s Order and Assessment” from TDEC’s Division of Water Resources in February detailing the violations, which allegedly occurred from May 1, 2019, through Nov. 30, 2021.
City officials were quick to point out that the problems are with the sewer system, and have nothing to do with the city’s drinking water.
“This is not about your drinking water,” Mitchell said earlier. “Your drinking water is clean.”
