Engineer reviews history of Polk water departments

Polk County has gained approximately 17 miles of water lines since 2007 and has accrued no debt for its two systems.

The Polk County Board of Commissioners met Monday, Nov. 21 and reviewed the history of the county’s water systems with county engineer Dave Odom.

Polk County began owning a water system when it purchased land for the middle school in Mill Spring and also bought the former Woodland Mills well system and sewer plant. The county extended a line to the Hwy. 108/Hwy. 9 crossroads in Mill Spring in November 2007 for $384,822. The Mill Spring system is known as the Polk County Water Department and has a couple of small extensions, including one that serves residences off Silver Creek Road and another extension that serves the Polk County Agriculture Center.

Polk County’s largest system is known as Polk County Water Department South and was created when Polk agreed to allow Broad River Water Authority (BRWA) to run a line through Green Creek to connect to Inman-Campobello Water District (ICWD) in South Carolina. In exchange for allowing the two systems to connect, Polk County owns the water line, is able to extend the line to Polk customers and is able to purchase up to 600,000 gallons per day of water from the BRWA water source. ICWD maintains Polk County’s south system.

“We really started extending water lines in 2007,” Odom said. “That’s when you first started expressing a vision of a system.”

In 2008, Polk County began to make extensions from the main BRWA line that runs along Hwy. 9. Several extensions have been made from the line, including along Sandy Plains Road, Blackwood Road, Strawberry Road, Claude Gilbert Road, Landrum Road, Green Creek Drive, Melvin Hill and to Peniel Road (see map right).

The county has spent $1,834,586 total for extensions and work on both its systems and is currently seeking bids to connect its Mill Spring department to the Town of Columbus water lines. That extension would connect all the water systems in the county, including the systems of Polk, Columbus, Saluda and Tryon. It would be a first step in creating a regional water system since Polk is connected to BRWA and ICWD and Saluda is connected to the Hendersonville water system.

Polk has not financed any work for its water systems yet, paying for extensions out of the budget, through participation fees or from the county fund balance. Polk also purchased Lake Adger for $1.6 million as a future water source and paid for it out of its fund balance.

“You’ve not over-taxed the county’s finances,” Odom said, “and you’ve done it at a rate you’re not seeing large prices (for construction). I commend you for all that.”

Odom said since the county ran a water line from the middle school to Hwy. 9, Polk has completed 10 projects, or about two water projects per year.

When the BRWA and ICWD connection occurred, Polk gained about 8 miles of 20-inch water line and 600,000 gallons of water supply per day, Odom said.

Odom said the county’s water system has provided water to residents who desperately needed it, with the system focusing on main roads. He mentioned residents in Green Creek who now get water from the county but were previously forced to haul water into their homes because their wells had gone dry.

The county’s long-term plan is to build a water plant on county-owned property near the transfer station, but estimates are that won’t occur for several years. Polk is also budgeting funding every year to make repairs to the Lake Adger dam as well as attempting to get the watershed reclassified in order to use the lake as a water source. Polk will have to have at least 1,000 customers prior to using Lake Adger.