Georgetown announces $26.4 million South Sewer extension project

GEORGETOWN, Ky. (WTVQ/Press Release) – Georgetown officials will break ground Friday on a $26.4 million project to provide municipal sewer service to a 500-lot mobile home
park straddling the Scott County-Fayette County border.

The South Sewer Project will expand the sanitary sewer collection system from the existing service area in the vicinity of the intersection of US-25 (Lexington Road) and Bypass US-62 (McClelland Circle) approximately 1.6 miles to the intersection of US-25 and KY1963 (Lisle Road) and will provide service to several mobile home parks and numerous existing homes and businesses in the area.

The package treatment plants serving Georgetown Mobile Estates (GME), a 500-lot park, have been an environmental issue since at least the mid-1990s. The plants are permitted by the Kentucky Division of Water (KDOW) to discharge into a subsidiary of the Cane Run Creek.

In August 2017, a Lexington consulting firm released preliminary findings of high fecal pollution and E. coli bacteria in the area of the GME property.

Further tests performed in 2018 showed levels of contaminants consistent with untreated human waste that were well beyond permitted levels in the vicinity of GME.

Georgetown Mayor Tom Prather and the staff of the Georgetown Municipal Water and Sewer Service (GMWSS) have been actively working with GME’s owners since 2016 to move GME to municipal sewer.

Issues with the current sewer system include failing package treatment plants, a dilapidated collection system which gets overwhelmed in heavy rains, and aged service tap-ons beneath the mobile homes.

The sewage is currently being treated by only one private package wastewater treatment plant, after KDOW ordered the second plant to be taken offline in recent years.

The South Sewer Extension project provides solutions to these issues through interceptor improvements, mobile home parks collector system improvements, and decommissioning of the two current private package wastewater treatment plants.

Residents of the park will have their service tap-ons replaced at no cost to them, thanks to an EPA grant.

“With this project, we are solving both an environmental and a humanitarian crisis,” said Prather. “These mobile home parks are situated between two of the most prosperous communities in all of Kentucky, and we owe it to the residents here to give them a better quality of life. The credit for this sewer line extension goes to many hard-working individuals from numerous local, state and private entities. The City of Georgetown is
proud to have served as the facilitator.”

“I appreciate leaders at all levels coming together to make much-needed infrastructure improvements in Georgetown, building a better Kentucky for more of our people by improving quality of life and creating jobs,” said Gov. Andy Beshear. “Quality water and sewer are a basic human right and we will continue to work together to improve infrastructure in every corner of the commonwealth.”

The South Sewer Extension project includes construction of approximately 41,000 linear feet of gravity sewers, 129 precast manholes, 12,000 linear feet of force mains, service connections to approximately 500 residential units, 50,000 linear feed of sanitary lateral pipe, four tunnels, demolition of three current pump stations, modifications to a pump station and a new submersible fourplex with a building, including electrical, instrumentation, storage room and a 750 kW standby generator.

The project also reserves future capacity for another nearby mobile home park in Fayette County, which is also served by an aging package treatment plant.

The reserved future capacity will provide an immediate solution in the event that a future environmental problem occurs at that mobile home park.

“We’re working with our neighbors to clean up the environment and help our citizens,” Mayor Linda Gorton said.

The project is made financially possible thanks to a partnership of impacted communities, including the City of Georgetown ($250,000), Scott County ($250,000), and LFUCG ($475,000), as well as state-level grant funding (HB 265 Non-Coal Grant of $1,075,000), an EPA/KDOW grant ($835,258), and a loan through the KIA Clean Water State Revolving Fund ($23,540,000).

The South Sewer Extension project is slated to begin in October 2021, with an estimated completion date of October 2023.