SALYERSVILLE – People driving downtown this week may have noticed a stronger-than-normal smell of sewage through Salyersville, but officials say the odor should get back to normal in the next 24 hours or so.
Salyersville Mayor Stanley Howard told the Independent the Division of Water had contacted his office reporting sewage flowing into the river and Howard said they were able to find the problem and correct it within a few hours of being notified.
“The problem was at the old sewer plant,” Howard said. “The man hole before you get to the sewer plant was stopped up, and there’s five or six manhole concretes adjacent to the park and coming up behind the community center, and they were all overflowing, but the stop up was down at the old sewer plant, so we got it unstopped and everything is flowing good now, but it will probably take 24 hours or longer to get everything pumped down and back to normal.”
Mayor Howard said the line runs all the way to Royalton, and down Rt. 40 to the county line, anticipating the sewage leakage affected every access point along those lines.
While that fixed one problem, that still leaves roughly 170 grinder pumps that are broken down throughout the sewage system, but Howard is hopeful they will receive the grant funding already allocated to them in the next couple of months to replace those.
“We got $2.1 million coming and all the paperwork is in,” Howard said. “It takes care of all the grinder pumps that are down individually and takes care of all the lift stations in the whole county, replaces all the pumps, electrical wiring and everything.”
The grants were awarded to the city last year, but were contingent on the audits being up to date, however.
“I spoke to the auditor last week and he said in two to three weeks he’ll be ready,” Howard confirmed for Mortimer Media Group.
About the timeline of when those projects can begin, Howard said, “By the time we bid the project out and the release of funds, I’m hoping two to three months, tops.”
In the meantime, Howard said the city has two trucks pumping out the backed-up sewage 12 hours a day, seven days a week, at the failing grinder pump locations, trying to keep it cleaned out, but confirmed they are not able to keep up with the problem.
The SI will continue to follow this ongoing issue.
