The City of Saluda’s sewer issues keep piling up with commissioners discussing yet another issue with a lift station that could cost significantly.

The Saluda Board of Commissioners discussed in detail a recent overflow at the Laurel Drive lift station during its October meeting where an estimated 214,000 gallons of untreated wastewater overflowed into an unnamed tributary of Cove Creek during heavy rains Sept. 26-29.

Prior to the overflow, during the city’s September meeting, city administrator Jonathan Cannon reported that the city received a letter from the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) informing Saluda that it was in violation. A report should have been completed to the state in April 2014. Cannon was not the administrator at the time and the state gave the city until Sept. 31, 2015 to complete the report or the city could be fined. Commissioners stated at the September meeting that they were unaware of the failings and Cannon said he would have the report completed by Sept. 31.

Part of the state’s requirements were for repairs to be done at the Henderson Cullipher manhole as well as the Green River BBQ manhole. Cannon detailed the repairs completed to commissioners during the September meeting. Cannon said then that not completing those repairs could have led to massive fines from the state. Cannon also said in September there were several items that should have been completed years ago but the city was unaware of them. Also in September, Cannon gave an example of a sewer pipe that had been leaking for years that the public works department recently discovered and repaired.

That sewer pipe being repaired in turn caused the Laurel Drive lift station to overflow when the area received approximately 14 inches of rain late September.

During the city’s October meeting, Cannon mentioned the 8-inch pipe repair that had been made near the Laurel Drive lift station and shortly after the repairs, the rains came and water began to overflow at the lift station.

“With the break being repaired, all that water made it to the lift station instead of leaking out,” Cannon told commissioners. “And that lift station began to overflow.”

Cannon said he immediately notified DENR of the overflow and they showed up that day, ordered the city to begin pumping, and to start looking for the cause and a remedy. Cannon commended public works employees for working countless hours to discover any issues, including standing in manholes, finding busted pipes and whatever they could do to find the source of water infiltrating that line.

Cannon said they found numerous manholes where water was running, pipes running at ¾ full and one particular yard that ponded with a significant whirlpool in the center, “and the list goes on and on.”

Cannon said there is a possibility the state will serve the city a penalty because of the spillover but he hopes since the city has made efforts to find and correct issues the city will be able to put its money toward repairing the system rather than paying a penalty.

Saluda paid $9,300 on pump trucks during the spillover to keep the lift station from continuing to overflow.

At one point Saluda had two pump trucks pulling 7,200 gallons every 20 minutes, according to Cannon’s report.

The increase in infiltration into the city’s system during heavy rainstorms “has come as a result of years and years of patching instead of replacing,” Cannon said.

DENR said the Laurel Drive lift station should have two pumps in the bottom in case one fails. Those pumps are brought to the top of the cylinder through a rail system, Cannon said, but currently Saluda’s lift station does not have a rail system and at the time of the rains, only had one pump. DENR also wants a notification system that will send texts or phone calls to a sequence of individuals once a lift station reaches a high water mark, but Saluda’s only has a visual alarm. Cannon said employees have put a second pump in the Laurel Drive lift station, which was a spare, rebuilt pump, meaning there’s a high potential for a loss of efficiency since it is a rebuilt pump. The city had two pumps at the lift station during the heavy rains at the beginning of October and did not experience an overflow but Cannon said it was close.

Resident Karen Bultman said the state says we should have two pumps and asked why the city didn’t know that before. Cannon responded that in 2014 DENR said they were not satisfied and the city responded to the state that it would come into compliance. In 2015, Cannon said, the state returned saying the city has done nothing and could issue a civil penalty. Bultman asked if the five commissioners and mayor were aware of the 2014 state notification. All commissioners and mayor Fred Baisden answered that they were not aware of the notification.

“We have now been told the problem and as a board we have to fix it,” said commissioner Mark Oxtoby.

Cannon said he’s contacted four or five companies with three giving estimates on rebuilding the lift station, including adding a notification system. Cannon also said a couple of years ago another lift station was rebuilt and he believes it cost approximately $14,000. Exact figures of the Laurel Drive lift station rebuild is expected to be discussed at the city’s November meeting.

Cannon said the city has three lift stations that need rebuilding, so at the $14,000 figure, the city is looking at approximately $45,000 for all three lift station rebuilds.

“I’d like for the people to know we found out about this when you got the letter and you jumped on it and started trying to get it fixed,” commissioner Leon Morgan said to Cannon.

Cannon said the city has a lot that needs to be done and a lot of expense that needs to be done.

“We can’t afford a lot of heavy rain storms and pump trucks every couple of months,” Cannon said. “That will destroy our budget. This project as well as two others that seriously need to be addressed are not in the CIP (Capital Improvement Plan) because they were not known.”

Cannon said there were numerous issues engineer Jonathan Hollifield was not aware of when the city’s CIP was composed so the CIP now needs to be updated.

The city was scheduled a couple of weeks ago to have smoke testing done on its system to find leaks. The city is also receiving bids to rebuild the lift station and incorporating that project into its CIP.

“When the truck stop lift station messed up a couple of years ago, the plan was to go around to all lift stations to systematically fix them,” Baisden said. “That didn’t happen.”

Baisden said the city can get the process going, find out what all repairs need to be done, find out where the city can get financing and borrow the money out of the city’s general fund until its enterprise fund can get a loan to pay it back.

Cannon said the city is likely looking at $45,000 to rebuild lift stations but the city still doesn’t know where it’s getting all the water. He said employees have tried to seal eight manholes that were leaking, they’ve fixed the yard drain, “but we’re still barely keeping our head above water so to speak.”