These Richland County schools have sewage in their yards. What’s being done about it?

The faint smell of human waste wafted near the Gadsden Elementary School playground early Friday morning, dampened slightly by the last night’s rain.

A chain-link fence wraps around a pond maybe 20 or 30 yards from where children take their recess. That’s the pond the school’s sewage flushes into, where fecal matter sits below the water. Chemicals are added to the water to break down the waste and help kill the odor.

At Hopkins Middle School, 7 miles away, an identical pond sits beside the school’s tennis courts.

Hopkins Elementary School has a poop pond too.

“If I had kids this size, I would never enroll them here because I think this is beneath the dignity of the children here and the people who work here,” Richland County Councilwoman Dalhi Myers said, as she looked through the fence at Gadsden Elementary’s open wastewater pond. Myers represents a broad swath of rural Lower Richland, including these three schools.

Each of these schools has been cited by the state Department of Health and Environmental Control for subpar wastewater systems. The Richland 1 school district, which is responsible for the schools’ wastewater, has been fined thousands of dollars by DHEC.

A long-delayed plan to lay a public sewer line through parts of Hopkins and Gadsden could eliminate these schools’ open sewage ponds and connect them to a county-operated wastewater treatment system for the first time. It would connect the schools and potentially thousands of homes, dozens of churches and the McEntire Joint National Guard Base to the Eastover wastewater treatment plant.

No more poop ponds.

But the sewer line has been delayed for years, and many Lower Richland residents continue to believe the project is not needed or wanted.

The sewer project has faced intense opposition from some residents who have expressed fears that it would be very costly to them and that it would result in over-development of this rural part of the county.

“The sentiment of most of the people I have talked to still remains the same, that the sewer project in our community is something that is mostly for developers,” said state Rep. Wendy Brawley, a Hopkins resident who has been an outspoken critic of the sewer plan for several years. “We should not be straddled with the expense of infrastructure for the sake of development. If developers want to build in Lower Richland, they should bear the expense.”

Brawley, a Democrat, also is suing the county for, she says, not providing information she requested through the Freedom of Information Act related to the sewer project.

She said she believes the schools’ sewage problems could be fixed by the school district for less than it would cost the county to lay a public sewer line.

The county, she said, has “used the schools as leverage to try to make the community feel obligated to do this.”

Richland County leaders have tried to allay some of the residents’ concerns and have made some changes to the sewer plan that was approved by DHEC several years ago.

The county will not force anyone to connect to the sewer line if they don’t want to, said Shahid Kahn, Richland County’s utilities director. And, Khan said, the county plans to waive the connection fees for property owners who choose to connect to the line before it’s completed.

The latest $16 million version of the sewer plan still needs County Council and DHEC approval — and public support, Khan said.

“My position remains that if my customers are not interested in buying my product, we should not be selling it,” Khan said. The county “should convince them it’s in their best interest or back off. We should not force” the sewer line, he said.

If the county does not end up installing the public sewer line, it will be up to Richland 1 alone to bring the Lower Richland schools’ septic systems up to DHEC’s standards, Khan said.

Myers said Richland 1 has committed $2 million toward the sewer line project. But, she said, the county has asked the school district to chip in another $500,000, which the district has not yet committed to.

Efforts by The State to reach Richland 1 school board chairwoman Cheryl Harris on Friday were unsuccessful.

The first phase of the sewer line could be under construction by next year if the revised plan is approved by both County Council and DHEC, Khan said.

Myers said her hope is “to get that standing sewer off the ground before the next school year.”

This story was originally published October 1, 2018 at 6:00 AM.