The City of Greenville's ailing sewer system will be the beneficiary of a $13.2 million federal grant to facilitate repairs.
In the regular Greenville City Council meeting, on April 2. 2024, before the first agenda item was addressed, Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons said, “President Joe Biden has signed a 13.2 million dollar grant that we will receive.”
Simmons said the grant comes from a State and Tribal Assistance Grant or STAG that Biden signed recently.
To put into perspective just how much of a commitment to the sewer, waste-water treatment plants, and sanitary water system improvements the money represented, Simmons told the council that the entire state of South Dakota only received $20 million.
In a letter to Congressman Bennie G. Thompson on March 28, 2024, Simmons asked for help finding funds to help pay for the city’s obligation to comply with the 2016, Consent Decree’s terms and conditions.
To help illustrate the broad scope of the problem Simmons wants to comply.
Simmons said, “The City of Greenville, Mississippi’s water system was formed in 1896 with the construction of the original Waterworks on W. Union St, and because the Mississippi Delta as a region, and Greenville in particular, suffers from a lack of economic opportunity, and as a result, the inability to shoulder the financial burdens to rehabilitate its deteriorating century-old sewer and water infrastructure.”
A little over eight years ago, on Jan. 28, 2016, just 26 days after a newly elected Simmons gave his inaugural speech, the United States, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, filed a complaint alleging that Greenville violated and continues to violate section 301 of the Clean Water Act, and the terms and conditions of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, and the state of Mississippi, acting through the Mississippi Commission on Environmental Quality and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality joined in the complaint alleging Greenville violated the Mississippi Air and Water Pollution Control Law.
Simmons writes about that time at the beginning of his first term as mayor, “The City of Greenville, the EPA, and the MDEQ entered in a Partial Consent Decree which was lodged with Federal District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi on April 16, 2016. The Partial Consent Decree cited the city with failure to meet permit requirements related to the operation and maintenance of the sanitary sewer system, sanitary sewer overflows, and other related violations of the rules,” Simmons continues explaining, “ This was after three years of negotiations as to the terms of the Consent Decree.
During that time, the City of Greenville took the initiative to begin addressing items that were in the Compliance Enforcement Inspection report.”
As part of the consent decree, the city installed supervisory control and data acquisition systems at 78 of the 104 city-maintained sewer pump stations, created capacity, management, operation, and maintenance plans and programs, and purchased portable bypass pumps.
“The City started the process of sanitary sewer evaluation and study of what was deemed the most critical sewer mini-systems, identified as Group 1,” Simmons says, “ Also, the city started the SSES of the mini-systems identified as next to the most critical, or Group 2, the mini-systems with completed evaluations can be seen on the map titled Mini-System
SSES status.”
He went on to explain in his letter that additional Early Action Projects were undertaken, including replacing the ultra-violet disinfection system at the Wastewater Treatment Plant, replacing the substation including the interior power feeds at the WWTP, and replacing a large diameter transfer pipe at the WWTP.
“All of these items were completed ahead of the established schedule in the Partial Consent Decree,” Simmons said.
But on Dec. 6, 2019, the city received notice from the EPA regarding violations of our NPDES permit at Greenville’s WWTP. The city was placed under an Administrative Order, of which the terms and conditions required compliance on or before December 31, 2021.
“The Mississippi River stages at the time of this order had been above the flood stage for several months and would continue to be for several months thereafter, “ Simmons said, “The secondary clarifiers, which the WWTP has four of, had locked up due to sand and grit building
up in them from the collection system during this high river stage period.”
A report from W.L. Burle Engineer, the firm contracted by the city, said with the elevated river stage and the proximity of the WWTP to the mainline protection levee, the clarifiers could not be drained for cleaning without the risk of floating the entire structure or the floors yielding to the hydrostatic pressure of the groundwater beneath them.
The EPA determined that a long-term solution needed to be developed that would allow the WWTP to be maintained completely regardless of the groundwater elevation beneath the facility. W.L. Burle Engineer, studied several options and determined that the most reliable and cost-effective solution was to anchor the clarifier floors to the ground through the use of 60-70 helical piles under each of the clarifiers.
The piles are screwed into the ground to a distance of approximately 50-60 feet.
This anchoring resists the uplift created by high groundwater stages that can, at times, be a few feet below the surface of the ground at the WWTP.
The city of Greenville was awarded $14,300,814 in American Rescue Plan Act funds and is
utilizing some of them to anchor clarifiers 3 and 4, but the Administrative Order on Consent requires that all the clarifiers be anchored by 2026.
Unfortunately, Simmons tells Thompson in his letter, that the City of Greenville cannot borrow any additional funds through the Water Pollution Control State Revolving Fund Program to anchor clarifiers 1 and 2, to complete this project and satisfy the conditions of the AOC.
At the council meeting, Simmons asked everyone present to stand in honor, of the people who helped make this grant a reality,
as Simmons said, "I want to honor and thank Lanier Avant, Greenville’s Lobbyist in Washington D. C, Senator Roger Wicker, and his staff for the bipartisan work that was accomplished with Congressman Bennie Thompson and his staff, to make this grant a reality for the City of Greenville."
