Sen. Jon Ossoff gives McDuffie County $1.1 million for sewer lines
MCDUFFIE COUNTY, Ga. (WJBF) – Senator Jon Ossoff is giving McDuffie County $1.1 million dollars in federal funding to expand sanitary sewer service to more than 90 people.
Right now, people living in some subdivisions off Wrightsboro Road have private septic tanks that are failing, causing waste to show up in their yards.
“Because of the bad soils and high water tables in that area, instead of going down if we have a lot of rain, it comes up. And so you can imagine it’s a pretty bad mess,” said Charlie Newton, Chairman of the McDuffie County Board of Commissioners.
County leaders said the initial estimates to replace those tanks with sewer lines doubled due to the pandemic, causing them to split the project into two phases.
The first phase on Pope Street and neighboring areas is currently underway.
With the new funding, they can complete the second phase of the more than $3 million project, and fix what they call a bad public health problem.
“We’re gonna be able to do both halves of the project now and fix the complete problem instead of fixing half of the problem,” Newton said. “It’s still gonna require us to add some additional local funding with it, but we’re very grateful to the Senator’s office for fighting for us and getting that one point one million.”
Leaders are relieved that some people affected won’t have to sit around and wait while their neighbors get the upgrades.
“When they flush their toilets we want to make sure it goes where it’s supposed to go. This is a great opportunity, Senator Ossoff’s office has made this a reality for us,” said Jason Smith, Community Development Director for McDuffie County. “It’s just great.”
“Hopefully the residents now are catching on that everybody’s gonna get service rather than just half, and we’re gonna have some excited people especially in Ridge View subdivision,” Newton said.
There isn’t a specific time period the project will be completed, but Chairman Newton said it should be sometime next year.
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