As South Carolina grows, so does the need to provide water and wastewater treatment to all those new houses, businesses and industries.
Providing the necessary infrastructure to deliver clean water and treated wastewater is a costly, large undertaking — one that cities around the state are working to address.
Aiken City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh described water and wastewater — along with police and fire service — as the four fundamental responsibilities of municipal government. In the growing Aiken area, that means planning and keeping up water and wastewater plant expansions to serve both residential and commercial expansions.
“We’ve done a lot and there’s still a lot to do,” Bedenbaugh said. “We’re no different from most communities that have water and wastewater utility systems. It requires constant maintenance and vigilance. And that does come with a cost. But we work very hard to do this as efficiently and inexpensively as possible.”
Bedenbaugh said Aiken and its surrounding utility area, like much of the state, has grown tremendously over the last few years.
“It started before COVID and it has accelerated,” he said. “Our planning and inspections offices have seen more applications for building permits and site reviews. Our engineering department has seen a lot of requests for plan reviews. So that made us look at our capacity issues.”
The city’s primary water treatment plant was nearly 70 years old and in need of an upgrade.
“We assessed whether we could do a renovation or whether it would be more cost-effective to build new, and we determined building new would be more effective,” he said.
Aiken also studied its existing water and wastewater line infrastructure, some of which dated to the early 20th century. Repairs and replacement of pipes in the ground, along with the installation of more valves in the water system, were needed to make the system more efficient.
Aiken looked to several areas to pay for the costly, necessary repairs. It increased its water and wastewater rates following a comprehensive study that showed its utility rates had not kept up with the cost of doing business. It also became more aggressive in seeking alternative funding.
That included money from the SC Rural Infrastructure Authority’s State Revolving Fund, which offers long-term, low-interest rate loans for public drinking water and wastewater facilities. Aiken also worked with U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s office, receiving appropriations in the last four federal budget cycles to help the city upgrade water and wastewater lines and increase capacity near industrial parks. Aiken received a South Carolina Infrastructure Investment Program grant to help pay for the water plant.
“We’ve availed ourselves of raising money locally through examination of our rates and targeted rate increases [along with] state funding, grants or low-interest loans, and federal funding through congressional directed spending,” Bedenbaugh said.
Aiken has completed the work on the water and wastewater lines, while groundbreaking on the water treatment plant is expected later this year. The new plant will have a capacity of 8 million gallons a day — a substantial increase over the existing plant.
The city also worked on a better way to treat wastewater odor by injecting oxygen into its wastewater system. Bedenbaugh said the chemicals that often are used to treat the smell can corrode and reduce the life expectancy of wastewater lines, and the byproducts can be hazardous in some cases. After studying utilities in Georgia and North Carolina that used oxygen to kill some of the odor-causing microbes without a hazardous byproduct, Aiken started using the process, which he said has been successful.
William Hall, the city administrator in Lake City, said when he started his job with the city 18 years ago after working a few decades in the corporate world, he had no understanding of the importance of water and wastewater processes.
“I came on with Lake City in the finance department and working with numbers. I didn’t think anything about what happened to my sewage,” Hall said. “When I got here, I said, ‘Look how much do we spend on wastewater.’ And ‘what’s a wastewater treatment plant?’”
Hall called his first visit to a wastewater treatment plant “fascinating” as he watched the process where raw sewage comes into the plant and is transformed into clean, clear water. He also quickly understood the importance — and the expense — of maintaining water and wastewater systems to keep up with the area’s growth.
Lake City recently rebuilt and upgraded its wastewater treatment plant.
Photo: City of Lake City.
Lake City’s wastewater treatment plant dated to the 1980s and needed a substantial upgrade. Along with serving Lake City, the wastewater treatment plant takes care of the region that encompasses Olanta, Coward, Scranton, parts of Florence and Williamsburg counties and the new Medical University of South Carolina hospital in the area.
“We’re not just Lake City anymore,” Hall said. “The wastewater treatment plant services the region.”
And that takes money. Lake City recently spent $15 million on a major upgrade to its Lake Swamp Wastewater Treatment Plant to replace aging equipment, provide additional biological treatment basins and improve the treatment of discharged wastewater.
The wastewater quality testing lab at the plant was more than 30 years old. While it had been passing all the necessary certifications, Hall said the city looked ahead and decided to complete a $1.25 million upgrade to the lab at the same time as the treatment plant upgrades.
Along with the new plant, Lake City also has changed some of its practices. It formerly contracted with a company to haul away the sludge — the treated byproduct that accumulates at a wastewater plant. The city now handles that process itself. The upgraded wastewater treatment plant has also reduced the amount of sludge Lake City needs to haul away to the landfill.
“If you freeze prices today it will save the community almost $2 million over a 10-year period,” Hall said. “That’s a substantial savings for us investing [in a container and trucks] and doing it ourselves.”
Funding for the improvements came from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and is administered by the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control with joint funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of South Carolina.
Hall said Lake City’s community partners are required to pay their share for water and wastewater, and the city is in the midst of negotiating contracts with towns and businesses. Lake City also had a rate increase last year, although it still has the second lowest rates in the area, he said.
“We’re not a rich community,” he said. “The bulk of our community is retired or elderly. It was a major undertaking to say we are going up on water and wastewater rates. But we had an aging water and wastewater system.”
As for the cost, Hall stressed the importance of investing in the people who run the plant.
“By DHEC’s rules and regulations, we have to have licensed people to operate that facility. These are highly sought-after people,” he said. “When you grab one, you better pay them because it’s better to keep them in place than have to go looking for them.”
Hall’s advice for other cities looking at how to plan for water and wastewater upgrades to address growth: “You need to know what you plan to do. You need to know how it will be financed. And you need to stick to your dates. You need an ending date.”