Norris council awards contract to begin sewer-line upgrades
The first contract has been let for replacement of sewer lines in Norris to help reduce the overflow of stormwater into the city’s sewage-treatment plant, shown here along East Norris Road. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
The work will include replacing older lines to help reduce the influx of stormwater runoff that overwhelms the city’s sewage-treatment plant following significant rainfall.
The contract, approved April 14 by the City Council, will cover about 25% of the sanitary-sewer system, City Manager Adam Ledford said.
“These are the areas most in need of repair or replacement to reduce load levels at the sewer plant,” he said.
Work is expected to begin within the next 30 to 60 days, and will cause some traffic disruptions, mainly on East Norris Road, as the lines are uncovered, Ledford said. “There will be very little damage to roads.”
The city is expecting to repave at least part of East Norris Road next year anyway, he added.
Excess runoff of stormwater into the city’s sewer system has caused the city to run afoul of state environmental authorities.
Since early 2022, Norris has been under a “director’s order” from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation to clean up its discharge of sewage into Buffalo Creek, just south of the sewer plant, which is on the west side of East Norris Road just north of Andersonville Highway.
The department found the city in violation of water-quality regulations concerning those discharges bypassing the sewage-treatment plant.
Last year, the city also set up a new Stormwater Department under control of the city manager, with the goal of creating a better system of managing stormwater runoff than what the city now has, which includes some stormwater collection lines mostly along city streets.
The problem is that during periods of heavy rain, stormwater infiltrates the city’s sanitary sewer system, causing an unmanageable flow to the city’s sewer plant.
There, the excess stormwater mixes with raw sewage, and because it can quickly overwhelm the treatment facility, this combination of sewage and stormwater ends up bypassing the treatment plant, and gets dumped into nearby Buffalo Creek.
The city in early 2022 hired Cannon & Cannon Consulting Engineers of Knoxville to create a plan to remedy the violations.
That plan, submitted to the council in May 2022, called for making the required sewer-system repairs beginning as soon as possible, with an estimated completion date of late 2028.
Under the engineers’ plan, the price for the bulk of the work was estimated to be $5.488 million, with a potential bill as high as $6.6 million.
That does not include the possibility the city might need to install a 750,000-gallon holding tank for stormwater runoff, at an additional cost of $2.1 million.
The city also will be required to update its sewage-treatment plant. Norris is hoping to get help from other nearby utility systems to pay for the new sewer plant.
