[Durham INC] 751 S -- county trying to make city approve water utilities

[Melissa Rooney]

Below is the latest article about the increasingly ridiculous debacles of the 751 S saga. 

We must not let people forget these antics (and abuse of power) during the next board of county commissioners' elections.


Melissa


Commissioners want to revisit 751 South sewer service
2 days 12 hrs ago | 1067 views | 0  | 7  |  | 
By Ray Gronberg

gronberg at heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM – County Commissioners signaled that they’ll vote to offer some of their government’s sewer-treatment capacity to the controversial 751 South project unless Durham’s City Council reconsiders the developers’ request for city utilities.

The commissioners on Wednesday said they want a report from County Manager Mike Ruffin on Sept. 26, and that Ruffin among other things should prod city administrators to take a second look at serving the project.

Ruffin should operate assuming that “you will have enough support from this board when you meet with city to let them know if they can’t make some kind of deal, we’re going to do this,” Commissioner Joe Bowser said.

Bowser added that he thinks the county has to help Southern Durham Development Inc.

“I want to see this project done,” he said. “There’s obviously an effort in this community to kill it. I want to see this project built out. First, our people need jobs; second, we need to do something about our tax base. We cannot sit here and allow people who want to build in our community to be beat down like this.”

His comments during Wednesday’s work session drew no dissent from other commissioners, not even from previous 751 South opponent Ellen Reckhow.

Ruffin at first signaled that he was inclined to sit on the developers’ request for service from the county’s Triangle Wastewater Treatment Plant until they explain where they intend to obtain water.

“Without water, sewer doesn’t mean much,” County Engineer Glen Whisler said before the meeting.

City officials have refused to consider extending water and sewer to the project until a lawsuit challenging a 2010 zoning decision by the county has run its course.

Ruffin also warned commissioners that the developers’ request could have other fallout because it implies a willingness to expand the Triangle plant’s intended service area.

A 1972 agreement with the city specified that the county would serve the Northeast Creek basin – which doesn’t extend as far west as the 751 South site.

“This treatment plant has a natural service area. This property is not located in that natural service area,” Ruffin said. “So it raises policy implications about extending a force main outside the natural service area into what can be argued is the city’s service area.”

The 1972 agreement, however, isn’t an ironclad service-boundary deal of the kind that governs utility extensions in neighboring Orange County. It wording doesn’t appear to forbid the county from serving points outside the Northeast Creek basin.

Commissioners on Wednesday didn’t take either of Ruffin’s qualms as a deal-breaker.

Dan Jewell, a landscape architect who’s working on 751, said project designers believe “a substantial part” of the 1,300 homes and 600,000 square feet of commercial space they intend to build can subsist on well water.

But other water sources “are being looked at” by hired consultants, Jewell said, without giving further detail.

Ruffin before the meeting speculated that the developers might look to the town of Cary for water.

Jewell said the developers intend to pay for the necessary sewage piping and figure they need to run lines from their property about 7,000 feet east to a pump station near the Fairfield neighborhood, off Scott King Road.

But Whisler said things might not prove that simple.

The county’s existing sewer mains weren’t sized for a 751 South-scale project because “this is not an area that was planned for coming to the [Triangle] plant” for service, he said.

Where they’re too small, upgrades would be necessary, Whisler said.

He added that Southern Durham also would have to pay the county roughly $2 million in “capital recovery” charges to help offset the cost of the Triangle treatment plant.

Apprised of Wednesday’s events, Mayor Bill Bell signaled that if county officials are looking for a fight, he won’t give them one.

“If they feel they can move forward with the resources they’ve got and the infrastructure they’ve got, that’s their decision to make,” Bell said. “You wouldn’t get any interference from me.”

But he also made it clear that if county officials and Southern Durham Development are bluffing, to make the City Council reconsider, he’s willing to call their bet.

“I think the council has been pretty clear, unanimous” about waiting on the outcome of the zoning lawsuit, Bell said. “I don’t want to revisit it now.”


Read more: The Herald-Sun - Commissioners want to revisit 751 South sewer service 


http://www.heraldsun.com/pages/full_story_news_durham/push?article-Commissioners+want+to+revisit+751+South+sewer+service%20&id=15426805&instance=main_article
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