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Town manager claims incident occurred due to aging infrastructure

 

TRYON-Due to recent heavy rainfall earlier this week, a sewage manhole in Tryon had an overflow, flooding excess rainwater and sewage into a nearby creek.

The rain causing the overflow began on Christmas day, finally relenting the evening of December 26. The flooding resulted in sewage and rainwater being emptied into Vaughan Creek, near Jervey Road.

Neill Rogers of Tryon was at the scene, observing the flooding and the worker’s efforts to stop it. Rogers is part owner of the Tryon Professional Building and a member of the Board of Property Owners Association.

“This happens from time to time, and it happened really bad last summer, and they came in and tried to fix stuff that they’ve continued to have problems with,” Rogers explained. “So when this happened late last summer, they said they got it fixed. But now we’re still having problems.”

Town of Tryon workers were on site attempting to stop the flooding the afternoon of December 26, and continued working on it as late as 6 p.m. that night. The Town of Tryon workers declined to comment on the repairs. 

The overflow finally subsided due to the rain stopping around 7:30 p.m later that night. 

“The town is dealing with aging infrastructure, and when we do have sewer overflow, we report it to the state as required,” said Tryon Town Manager Jim Fatland.

“We don’t want to see these things happen, but with aging infrastructure, it will happen,” Fatland continued. “But these overflows give us opportunities to get grants from the state of North Carolina. That’s pretty much where the town is at this time.”