WADESBORO — After months of discussion, the Anson County Board of Commissioners will move forward with creating a water resource director.
Introduced by County Manager Leonard Sossaman on June 18, Anson County Board of Commissioners continued debating the merits of hiring an engineer from outside the county’s utilities department to act as its water resource director versus continuing to contract out water treatment, sewer, and general utilities management to an outside firm.
Anson contracted firm Hazen and Sawyer to act as resource director, but the contract will soon expire, leaving commissioners with the tough choice to make. The board, who resisted making a decision throughout the summer, voted August 20 in favor of restructuring the utilities department hierarchy through its nearly unanimous approval to create a water resource director to lead the department.
The only commissioner to voice any opposition to the proposal, Commissioner Priscilla Little-Reid, did not vote in favor of the motion made by Commissioner JD Bricken and seconded by Commissioner Jarvis Woodburn. Sossoman announced the water resource director position will have a salary grade of 80 or be in the 5 to 6 figure salary range. Pay is in line with the current grades of Directors’ for the Public Health, Social Services, and Finance departments in Anson County.
Anson County’s water facility, built in the 1960’s, originally accommodated 2 million gallons per day of water usage, but modern output request near 16 million gallons of water per day. Two of the eight filters at the plant are and have been inoperable for quite some time.
Referencing the malfunctioning filters, Sossoman advised commissioners in June the downed filters cause an immediate 25 percent reduction in output at the plant. Due to Anson’s water woes extending beyond its water plant, Sossaman informed the board that the intake structure will need to be worked on next.
“As you know, you told me at one time, the intake structure was close to being in the river. Well, it is not close anymore, it is actually in the river, as you have seen,” Sossaman said,
In favor of creating a new position to oversee the water department, Sossaman promoted an engineer’s ability to work with the county’s planning director to go out and identify water and sewer lines, locate all of the county’s fire hydrants and test them to confirm they are working properly.
“Once that is done, we could let you know that within about one meter of a location, an interchange or a certain point of the road that is where that fire hydrant is so that when the fire trucks roll they will know where they are going,” he said. “It is not just a water plant, a sewer plant, it is all those lines in place. We have [700 miles] of mismatch [lines] in some cases, large lines feeding into small lines and then back into a large line. That is like putting a restrictor plate on a carburetor, you know, it is only going to put out so much once you do that.”
Conferring with Hazen and Sawyer, Sossamon learned if the county were to build a modernized facility in 2024, one able to pump the needed sixteen million gallons per day, then it would cost the county upwards of $300 million. More than two years ago, commissioners appointed the engineering firm Hazen and Sawyer to conduct a condition assessment of Anson County’s drinking and wastewater facilities. During the condition assessment, over $100 million in needed repair and upgrade costs were identified. This prompted the state to allot $11.4 million towards needed repairs and upgrade expenses.
Though the Hazen and Sawyer contract is concluding, the firm still has open projects to complete for Anson County. Currently, Hazen and Sawyer are working to revamp the sewer system. These repairs are funded through monies granted by the state. The board voted on June 27 for work to begin on sewer repairs. The county manager said then that funds for the current sewer project are coming from an appropriation from the state.
“[It is coming] out of the special appropriation from the state general assembly,” He said.
Commissioner Little-Reid’s concerns related to cost, she questioned if the county will continue to pay Hazen and Sawyer in addition to an engineer. Commissioners confirmed when the Hazen and Sawyer contract officially ends, the county will no longer be paying the firm, if an engineer is hired for the county. Should the county choose to hire a water resource director, upcoming Hazen and Sawyer projects will be funded through grants or awards by the state, not contracted through the county.
“I was talking to somebody and their population is 50,000, ours is just at, what, 22-23,000 and they said they only contract, they don’t have a full-time person on staff to do the engineers. They said they just contract over… he said if your county is not growing, why would you get an engineer, a full-time engineer?” Little-Reid said.
It is unclear if the community cited by Little-Reid is facing a similar water crisis to Anson’s. Offering a solution for one of her objections to the motion, she said, “I would like to suggest that maybe the engineer, that Sossoman be over him, and then he just work with Chris and Mike, instead of him being over Chris and Mike. They are already supervisors, why can’t the county manager just be over him [engineer].”
Chairman Jamie Caudle agreed that all of Anson’s utilities employees need to work together to improve the water system, reminding Commissioner Little-Reid that every position in the workforce has a “boss.”
Foisted into the spotlight by Caudle, Asst. Utilities Director Chris Harrington was called from out of the crowd of attendees to the podium. Commissioners requested he provide insight into the leadership structure issue. Harrington has been employed with the utilities department for nearly twenty years, while Director of Public Utilities Mike Sessions has been at the helm for fifteen years.
“I personally do not think it is a good idea right now, because you have Hazen and Sawyer already in this contract that are still doing the work. I have no trouble reporting to whoever you tell me to report to,” Harrington said “… I don’t have a problem with it, but it seems kind of like working backwards if you get an engineer that is new to the county. We have already been here 20 plus years, you bring him in and he is over us, he is not going to want to do daily operations, he is not going to want to deal with the rest of the employees, he is not going to want to do that for engineering work,” Harrington said.
“If you are looking for an engineer that is just going to do engineer work then he probably needs to be set just to do engineer work. You don’t want to put him in here and tell him you got to do engineer work, you gotta do manual labor, you gotta do everything else that comes along with what we do,” he added.
Commissioner Woodburn said “In this job description he [water resource director] does everything from engineering to all the daily activities involved in the utilities department… it’s got an engineering background but there is a lot of day-to-day activity work involved in this job position. This would be a staff person that is actually going to do engineering work but it would oversee the day-to-day activities of the utilities department that we currently have in place. They are at a higher level and will be able to do some things that the people that we currently have in those departments are not able to do, from an engineering standpoint.”
Weighing in, Commissioner Bricken said, “At this time, it would be more cost effective for Anson County to recruit and hire our own engineer to continue the evaluation of our needs.”
He expects hiring an engineer will open doors to new funding resources for Anson County as the engineer cooperates with state officials and will guide the county through its expected future growth.
“We really cannot afford to keep our system going with the money that we have in our fund balance. We have to figure out a way to bring funding into the county to maintain and improve our system,” said Bricken. “It is a $300 million project that is in need of replacement, it is outdated, it is beyond its life expectancy.”
He touted an engineer’s ability to work with state officials to, like Hazen and Sawyer, write grants and aggressively pursue other financial avenues through the state.
“We need an engineer that cannot only be present at the plant as a site rep but can go back and forth to Raleigh when they need to, back and forth to Fayetteville where DEQ and DWQ offices are…our plant is way beyond its life expectancy and we need a lot of help.”
More information about job requirements for the newly created water resource director position can be found on the Anson County website.
