Lexington can not add development without solving sewer issues first | Opinion

The Urban County Council is considering the goals and objectives for Lexington’s 2045 Comprehensive Plan which will include a methodology for the expansion of Lexington’s Urban Services Boundary. Growth could be a source of jobs/opportunities/housing, but we need to make evidence-based decisions about how we do it and pay attention to infrastructure. An important part of infrastructure is the sanitary sewage system. Growth and expansion will require an expanded sewer system, and expanding into the agricultural part of Fayette County will require careful choices. What happens outside of the Boundary will impact those of us living inside the Boundary.

Lexington neglected its sanitary sewer system for decades, and after federal legal intervention has been working to minimize the deposit of raw sewage into our streams and, indirectly, into our yards and basements. Some manholes regularly overflowed in people’s yards. A manhole adjacent to the stream behind Veterans Park Elementary School was at least two feet above ground level with trenches next to it to guide overflowing sewage directly into the stream. A pump station was too small and dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of sewage into the South Elkhorn. Approximately 40 individuals with sanitary sewer issues in their homes sued both the Urban County Government and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the former for not complying with the U.S. Clean Water Act and the latter for not enforcing it. When a flood occurs, and sewer pipes are broken, water enters the sanitary sewer system and it overflows. Lexington had to deal with it.

If the expansion of the Urban Services Boundary is to work, Lexington has to be careful to not backtrack to the bad practices of the past. To avoid a court case in federal court and very large fines, Lexington signed a Consent Decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency several years ago to correct its violations. Subsequently, the Urban County Government’s Division of Water Quality has been doing an almost impossible job to correct insurmountable problems following many decades of neglect. The EPA should accept Lexington’s and Water Quality’s work by sometime in 2027 or slightly later.

If and when Lexington grows and develops outside of the Urban Services Boundary, all properties that will develop are not equal. Some are accessible to our sanitary sewer system, some are not, and others can only connect to it following a very large expenditure of public and private funds. The Goal 4 Committee, in particular, identified 27,000 acres outside the USB for possible development. However, the work to determine which of the 27,000 acres costs the least to connect to the our sewer system is still a work in progress. A second factor is “capacity assurance.” Until the EPA releases Lexington from the work required under the Consent Decree, “capacity assurance” requires that development can only occur if sewer lines, pumps, and our sewage treatment plants have the capacity to manage the sewage. If a development would result in overflows, sewage in basements, overflowing manholes, and polluted streams, it cannot be built. The Urban County Council needs to require that “capacity assurance” stays in place after the EPA signs off on Lexington’s corrections of its violations. That will be critical. During the negotiations with the EPA, the Lexington development community hired legal counsel to try to keep “capacity assurance” out of the Consent Decree. We can hope that our development community is more sensitive to environmental and neighborhood concerns today. All of our watershed still have E. coli problems and some neighborhoods still have flooding and sewage issues.

\u0009Expansion of the Boundary has been a major planning issue for over 25 years and is not likely to go away. Boundary expansion involves a lot of moving pieces, and sewage system capacity and cost is only one of them. However, it’s an important element, and we should never want to rush backwards into the past.

Walt Gaffield is the President of the Fayette County Neighborhood Council.