After years of resistance, new sewer and water lines are coming to Lower Richland
When Robert Reese, former president of the Lower Richland chapter of the NAACP, moved back to his hometown in 2018, he was shocked to see the conditions his parents were living in.
Every time it rained, their septic tank backed up. They couldn’t flush the toilet properly and dirty water would sometimes come out of the faucet.
“My dad told me, ‘whatever you do, you have to help us get some sewer out here,’” he said. “It’s almost as if we’re living in a third world country when we’re a suburb of the capital city.”
Now, a $24.2 million infrastructure project will bring new sewer and water hookups to hundreds of homes in Lower Richland. The county initiative, funded through revenue bonds, had been stalled for several years as residents raised concerns about whether it would impact affordability and change the rural character of the area.
“There are lots of people that don’t want anybody to have access to public infrastructure at all,” said County Council member Dalhi Myers, who has helped push the project forward. “But just as I should not be able to force you to purchase it, you should not be able to ban me from getting it.”
The water will come from two industrial wells and an elevated tank located at 1629 Clarkson Road in Hopkins. Pump stations for the sewer system have been proposed at several locations including Franklin Park, Garners Ferry Road, McEntire Joint National Guard Base, and Hopkins Park.
In September 2019, the county signed an agreement with the City of Columbia that would allow 1,400 Lower Richland residents to switch from the city’s sewer lines over to new county operated lines.
In April, construction crews started digging the new water and sewer lines along a 33-mile stretch of Lower Richland that covers Lower Richland Boulevard, Airbase Road, Congaree Road, Bluff Road, Reynolds Road, U.S. 601, Cabin Creek Road, Ault Road, Trotter Road, Congaree Church Road, and Clarkson Road. The first phase of the project should be completed by July 2021.
Though water is currently available for some residents, sewer will not be available until the end of phase one.
So far, around 60 residents have signed up for water and 70 have signed up for sewer. Those residents will have to pay around $75 a month depending on their water usage, but the $4,000 sewer tap fee and $1,500 water tap fee have been waived for anyone who signed up before the original deadline of Dec. 16, 2019.
Myers said County Council has since approved an extension of that deadline though it is still unclear what the new cutoff date will be.
“We don’t want to make it so prohibitively expensive that people might say ‘I might need services but I can’t afford it,’” Myers said.
Carleen Goodson-Eaddy, who has lived in Lower Richland her whole life, said she was initially against the county’s plan. Then her water pump stopped working. She spent a whole year without water before she was eventually hooked up to the county line.
“I was having to catch rainwater in buckets. It was terrible,” she said.
After seeing how well her water worked, Goodson-Eaddy said she jumped at the opportunity to sign up for sewer to replace her failing septic tank.
“I hope that people here will open their eyes and see how they can benefit from having this because changes are coming, infrastructure is coming whether you want it or not,” she said.
Helen Bradley, another lifelong Lower Richland resident, said she feels the county government has misled the community. In 2015 she was part of a group that filed a lawsuit against the county to try to block the project
“Years ago when we first started looking at the paperwork of what this would mean we found all sorts of issues,” she said. “They wanted to put a lien on people’s property if they didn’t pay their water bill. I feel like if they weren’t truthful to us the first time around why would they be now?”
State Rep. Wendy Brawley, D-Richland, was another outspoken opponent of the initial iterations of the project. Though many of the aspects she took issue with — including placing pumping stations on people’s private property — have since been scrapped, Brawley said she still fears the project may cause more harm than good.
“There’s a possibility that the people who live here now, once their property values change because of the development that’s happening around them, they’re no longer going to be able to afford the taxes in the community they grew up in,” she said.
Myers said that the new system being put in place “eradicated every single problem the community articulated” about the plans introduced in past years. She also noted that three area schools with cesspools — Hopkins Elementary School, Hopkins Middle School and Gadsen Elementary School — will be helped thanks to the project.
“In years to come, this new system will prove to have been a lifeline for this community and its schools,” she said. “I could not be more proud to have solved what many called an unsolvable problem. It’s a win. Plain and simple.”
This story was originally published October 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that Robert Reese is the president of the Lower Richland NAACP. He is the former president.
