Citing few customers, board rejects $1.7M to extend public water, sewer

The Nelson County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 at a Feb. 25 meeting to not accept nearly $1.7 million offered by the Department of Environmental Quality to extend public water and sewer lines from the intersection of Va. 56 and Va. 151 into Roseland.

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 sewer and waterlines to residents to address water contamination from two leaking, underground fuel storage containers.

East District Supervisor Allen Hale made the motion to not accept the funding, and voted in favor of it, saying there were “too many unknowns” at this point, including the cost of the project.

North District Supervisor Tommy Harvey and Central District Supervisor Connie Brennan also voted in favor of not accepting the money from DEQ.

West District Supervisor Thomas Bruguiere and South District Supervisor Joe Dan Johnson voted against the motion and for accepting the money.

Hale said that along with the cost of the project, the county would be accepting an additional $25,000 to $35,000 per year in operating and maintenance costs with the waterline extension.

“I think we are being lured into a project which has annual costs with it for eight water customers,” Hale said. “And there are pressing needs before the (Nelson County Service Authority) but this project would not solve them.”

Brennan said she agreed with Hale.

“There are too many uncertainties for me to be comfortable with this,” she said. “I’m hesitant to take on what could be considerably more debt at an already tough (budget) time.”

The possibility of extending public waterlines into Roseland was brought before the supervisors in June, 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 the two leaking underground storage tanks on Va. 151 at Ferguson’s Store and the Roseland Rescue Squad building.

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.

At the Feb. 25 meeting, supervisors directed staff to draft a letter to the DEQ outlining their reasons for not accepting the funds.