Lake View school sewer stalemate still unresolved

TUSCALOOSA | An attorney for the Tuscaloosa County Board of Education offered to mediate a compromise between the towns of Lake View and Woodstock in order to obtain sewer access for Lake View Elementary School.

Officials for Lake View and its sewer utility, however, said those efforts would be wasted if they limited future access to the new sewer line built for the school, which opened in August.

“We would not agree to any [limitations on future customers],” said J. Michael White, the operating manager of SERMA Holdings and ECO-Preservation Services, the two companies that manage and treat sewage for the Lake View General Utility Service Corp.

Ray Ward, attorney for Tusca-

loosa County Schools, made the

offer during a meeting with the editorial board of The Tuscaloosa News that included school officials, White and Lake View Mayor Fred Pugh. State Rep. Gerald Allen requested the meeting.

Allen offered a bill in the state Legislature earlier this year that would have resolved the issue, but it was blocked by Sen. Bobby Singleton at the end of the 2008 session. As a result, the county school system has been forced to pay about $400 each day for a pump truck to remove sewage from the school.

At issue is a strip of land about 1,000 feet long and 25 feet wide.

Circuit Judge John England ruled in November 2007 that the towns of Woodstock and Lake View had

annexed land improperly. His ruling reset the towns’ boundaries to their year 2000 limits.

The ruling also changed the legal designation of this strip of land from a right-of-way, which a municipalities cannot annex, to an easement, which can be absorbed by a town.

Woodstock annexed this strip — with the line already in place — soon after the court’s ruling. Doing so immediately placed restrictions on how Lake View’s sewer utility may use the line.

Allen said he intends to reintroduce a bill in the 2009 Legislative session that would revert this strip back to the jurisdiction of Lake View, thereby ending this portion of the dispute. Should the bill pass, the school could have sewer access as soon as mid-February.

In hopes of a faster solution, Ward suggested a compromise that would allow Lake View to add a limited number of new customers to the sewer line. White said the utility could not accept any limitations on adding customers.

“The alternative [to compromise] is a lawsuit, which we are awfully close to filing,” Ward said.

Even if a court ordered Lake View to open the school’s sewer line, the associated costs could prove enormous if the school remains the sewer line’s only user.

White said the 3.5-mile line requires a large amount of wastewater and sewage to maintain the adequate amount of flow through the line. Because the school would not generate enough discharge on its own, clean water would have to be pumped through the line to keep the waste moving.

Under the original agreement between the school and the Lake View GUSC, the utility initially would pay to pump the additional water through the system with the understanding that additional users eventually would tie on. Over time, these added users would create the required minimum flow.

While Woodstock officials have said that Lake View can serve the school, a resolution passed by the Woodstock Town Council did not grant Lake View permission to serve additional customers.

That’s why Ward indicated he would ask the court whether Woodstock can regulate the use of an outside utility’s sewer line when that line was in place before annexation.

It is this sticking point that is keeping the line, which the school system spent more than $1 million to install, from being used.

Until this matter is resolved, either by an act of the Alabama Legislature or a court order, White said he has no intentions of granting the school sewer access.

“I can’t flip a switch and turn on a line that going to lose money forever,” White said. “It’s not going to happen.”