News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
TDEC has given Algood the nod to bid out a large-scale sewer rehabilitation project.
Algood City Administrator Keith Morrison said the city has been using cameras to inspect failing systems for several years in preparation for the project. The inspections have revealed cracks and busted sections of lines that have been in place since the 1960s. Morrison said during periods of heavy rainfall, the system is allowing stormwater to infiltrate sewers.
“We’re paying Cookeville to treat stormwater, and we don’t want to do that,” Morrison said. “So, the more we can hold off the infiltration, the better off we are, and the more cost-effective it is to run our system and provide sewer services for our customers.”
Morrison said preventing the added burden of stormwater in the water pumped to Cookeville for treatment would allow for lower rates for Algood customers. He said he will meet with engineers this week to formulate a plan of which areas to hit first.
Morrison said he hopes to have the project bid out and get work started by the next fiscal year.
“We’ll do something called pipe bursting,” Morrison said. “So there will be holes and they’ll shoot new lines in, and then we will attach new services to those. So there will be some digging, but we’re going to try to minimize it as much as we can, but we know we’ve got a lot of sewer lines that need work.”
Algood received some $967,000 in grant funding from TDEC to do the work. He said the camera and cleaning work counted as Algood’s grant match. He said the non-competitive grant will also fix some manholes and fund upgrades at a few stations that need work.
“Day-to-day, they’re not too bad,” Morrison said. “But when it rains real heavy, we get a lot of stormwater flooding the system that causes the stations to work harder.”
He said the city has generated a list of areas where the problem is the worst, and hopes to have that list finalized Monday and released to the public soon.
