County delays making waterline decision

The Nelson County Board of Supervisors decided at its Feb. 16 meeting to wait for further information on funding before making a decision on whether or not to extend a public waterline from the intersection of Va. 151 and Va. 56 into Roseland to address groundwater contamination issues.

The supervisors are scheduled to meet next at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Nelson County Courthouse in Lovingston.

The waterline extension would be a continuation of the Piney River Project that the county and the Nelson County Service Authority began in March 2004 to extend public water and sewer lines to residents.

East District Supervisor Allen Hale was appointed to work with county staff and Nelson County Service Authority staff to review estimated project costs and bring the information back to supervisors to review at their Feb. 25 meeting.

The possibility of extending public waterlines into Roseland was brought before the supervisors in June of 2009, when Mike Larson, of Draper Aden Associates, an engineering firm that previously has worked on the Piney River Project, outlined the cost and design options to extend already completed water and sewer services in Piney River to Roseland.

Larson said that the main reason to extend the waterline

was two documented leaking underground storage tanks on Va. 151 at Ferguson’s Store and the Roseland Rescue Squad building.

The contamination from the

leaking underground fuel tanks affects eight resident wells, Nelson County Administrator Steve Carter said.

During that June meeting, Larson presented supervisors with four options for completion of the project, ranging in price between $500,000 to $2.9 million.

The Department of Environmental Quality has offered the county $1.7 million to extend the waterlines to address groundwater contamination issues.

In a joint meeting between the Nelson County Board of Supervisors and the Nelson County Service Authority in January, authority members said an extension would not be possible because of water supply issues and upgrades to the system would have to be made to address these issues.

These upgrades came with an estimated price tag of $9.3 million.

At the Feb. 16 meeting, Carter said the authority agreed that the waterline could be extended from Piney River to Roseland without the $9.3 million in upgrades if the connections to the waterline were limited to the eight customers whose water was contaminated.

Nelson County Service Authority Director Tim Castillo said the authority would continue to look for money to pay for the upgrades and other projects without a commitment from the Nelson County Board of Supervisors to contribute funding.