Lexington poop-pumping truck will move on as busted sewer pipe agreement is reached
After nearly a year, the town of Lexington is moving toward getting a sewage pump truck out of its downtown business district.
The town announced this week it has reached an agreement with a property owner that will give workers access to replace a broken sewer line running under several Main Street businesses. For nearly a year, sewage from that line had to be emptied by a pump truck parked in a downtown parking lot.
Lexington placed the sewage truck there in March 2023 as a temporary solution to the broken sewer line, which the town says is nearly 100 years old, while officials tried to gain access from the owner of the building. The town even went to court in May for a limited condemnation of the Main Street property so crews could gain access to the line.
“The Town has worked tirelessly to come to this resolution with all property owners, keeping the utility ratepayer at the forefront during the negotiations process,” Lexington said in a statement released Tuesday.
“The Town has been aware for decades that one day this would become an issue and has worked for years prior to the failure to gain an easement from property owners to relocate the line,” the statement reads. “However, until now those efforts were stalled in negotiations and at one-point, condemnation.”
The condemnation notice sought to gain access to a permanent utility easement for each property, totaling 2,850 square feet, as well as another 2,000 square feet for a temporary construction easement. The town offered the property owners compensation of $4,325.
The sewer failure didn’t affect operations at O’Hara’s Bakery and Cafe or Cho on Main Salon and Boutique, the Main Street-fronting businesses that sit atop the broken line, and the city said they would have remained open despite the condemnation.
The property owner, New Brookland Associates, fought the condemnation in a May court filing, claiming there is a “better engineering way to fix the problem of the sewage, but (the town) has elected to place the alternate sewage pipe onto the Plaintiff’s property rather than a downstream property where the gravity feed is much better.”
Joel Carter, the listed agent for New Brookland Associates, confirmed Thursday that the dispute has been resolved.
Lexington is now in the process of hiring a contractor, and will then “coordinate with the property owners and tenants about how construction will impact them,” the town said.
“The Town will seek to minimize disruption to businesses, including providing reserved parking on our property as needed.”
A town spokesperson previously estimated it will cost $500,000 to replace the pipe, which was originally laid in 1925.
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