A proposal between Effingham County and the city of Guyton that seemed to have been stalled is getting new life.
After several weeks, Guyton officials have responded to the county’s offer to provide wastewater treatment service to the city at the county’s sewage treatment plant. County engineer Steve Liotta is optimistic a final deal can be ironed out.
“We would need to address a lot of things,” Liotta said. “But we believe there is room for negotiation.”
A group from the county — including commissioners Jeff Utley and Myra Lewis and chairman Dusty Zeigler — along with county staff will meet with Guyton representatives to try to put a deal in place.
“I think this is a good thing,” Lewis said.
The county proposed a set of terms to handle Guyton’s wastewater treatment needs following the service delivery strategy mediation meeting on Jan. 21.
“We hadn’t had anything back from Guyton in quite a while,” Liotta said.
But the city sent a proposed agreement back to the county on April 23, and the proposal implements many of the items the county had put forth.
“We’re trying to come to an agreement everybody can live with,” Guyton Mayor Michael Garvin said. “This is going to be our long-term solution. We feel we had to give in some. But we also felt they had to give in some.”
Garvin said the city took a long time with the proposal to see where they could compromise and has asked for a 500,000 gallons per day commitment for its long-term need.
“There are quite a few details to work out,” Liotta said. “We are encouraged they accepted most of our requests. There is a little bit of negotiation that is going to have to take place.”
The city has accepted the county’s purchase price of capacity, though the city had upped its needed capacity request from 250,000 gallons per day to 275,000 gallons per day. Guyton also is asking to purchase capacity in increments of 15,000 gallons per day instead of 50,000 gallons per day.
Under the request, 275,000 gallons per day would cost $2.94 million, Liotta said, and the original offer of 250,000 gallons per day would cost $2.67 million. The city also has offered to accept the county’s wholesale rate and is open to sharing the cost of conveyance — the means of getting the sewage from Guyton’s customers to the county’s McCall Road wastewater treatment plant.
Where Guyton’s lines would stop and the county’s would begin also needs to be worked out.
“This is a step in the right direction,” County Administrator David Crawley said.
The county’s wastewater treatment plant has a 1 million gallon per day capacity and can be expanded up to as much as 20 million GPD. The next expansion step is 2.5 million GPD.
Guyton currently is using about 80,000 gallons per day out of Springfield’s 500,000 GPD treatment plant. Springfield’s own sprayfield is permitted for 350,000 gallons per day.
Guyton’s plans to build its own 250,000 gallon per day wastewater treatment plant, which has met with opposition from Riverside Drive area residents and others, are still in effect, according to Garvin.
“That’s still on the table,” he said, “depending on what we can negotiate out of this. This is probably costing us more than building our own. But it’s looking at a working relationship and not trying to duplicate services is why we feel they need to give some and we’re trying to give some.
“We put a lot of time and effort into it in trying to get something worked out. We may be the city of Guyton, but we’re still part of Effingham County.”
