City delays west Columbia multi-million dollar sewer expansion

The Columbia City Council delayed a multi-million dollar sewer extension for a broader discussion on its effect.

The Henderson Branch sewer extension involves a $4.3 million construction of sewer stretching from west Columbia to a spot near the Midway Travel Plaza at Interstate 70 and U.S. Highway 40. The council tabled the issue for its October 3 meeting. The 8,600-foot line would run along the Henderson Branch waterway, which feeds to Perche Creek. The long-awaited project nearly doubled in cost due to difficulty building in the Perche Creek floodplain. Columbia Public Works said the project will eliminate the need for some private wastewater discharge sites into the creeks, hopefully improving water quality, and allowing for future development due to access to city sewer. Those properties would then need to be annexed into the city – such as the Midway Travel Plaza, the MidwayUSA facility and Perche Creek Golf Course as examples.

City council members questioned the rising cost of the project since its approval as a project for 2013 bond funding voters approved then. Sanitary Sewer Engineering Manage David Sorrell said it would take the equivalent of 2,150 homes connecting to the sewer to repay the full cost. Fourth Ward City Councilman Ian Thomas said annexing that area into the city would also increase cost of maintaining roads, as well as police and fire service.

“I think it is an equity issue,” Thomas said. “I think that growth has been very profitable for a very small group of people.”

Second Ward City Councilman Michael Trapp said the city owed it to voters to go forward with the project, since the city promised it as part of the 2013 bond issue.

“If we don’t keep the promise that we made with this ballot project, how are people going to expect us to keep the promise that we make on future ballot processes,” Trapp said.

Ultimately, the group agreed to table it, in order to have a discussion about the “equity” of the project, compared to other sewer needs in the city.

The council will also approved $2.7 million in various sewer repairs, including hundreds of manholes and lateral connections. The projects seek to reduce “inflow and infiltration” of stormwater into city sewers, which causes rain to mix with sewage and either back up into people’s homes or dump into city creeks. Columbia has worked with TREKK Designs to find improper connections from people’s homes in some areas of town to the pipes underground, and determine where the worst points of inflow and infiltration exist.

(Editor’s note, 12:30 a.m., 7/6: This story has been updated from a pervious version, titled “Several sewer projects slated for Columbia City Council approval.”)