A river flows (cleaner) through it: Albany's sewage system improvements, future work to reduce pollution Flint pollution

ALBANY — When members of the Flint Riverkeeper environmental group approached Albany officials a few years ago to discuss the city's sewage woes, heavy rainfalls meant frequent discharges of raw sewage into the river and at times overflows into neighborhoods.

A lot has changed since then, and with the city now looking to finance the completion of a project to separate stormwater and sewage to prevent future spills, the future smells much better.

That's the assessment of Gordon Rogers, executive director and riverkeeper for the environmental group.

"Seven years ago, the city was sort of steady as she goes, and they were putting Band-Aids and chewing gum and bailing wire on their system," he said. "Nobody was paying attention to it in a budgetary sense. The city employees were doing as good a job as they could with what they had.

"The CSO (combined sewage overflow) was sitting there working perfectly — it was taking sewage to the river. We began talking to the city seven years ago about fixing that, (because) heavy rain events were causing lift station problems, and they got serious."

The city realized the severity of the problem and got to work, Rogers said. Flint Riverkeeper has kept in contact, and Rogers praised the efforts of City Manager Steven Carter and his predecessor, Sharon Subadan, as well as Mayor Bo Dorough and former Mayor Dorothy Hubbard.

The city initially invested heavily in improving the performance of the lift stations. Maintenance that had been delayed was performed.

The result, Rogers said, is far fewer spills.

"If you look at the spills, it's gotten down to where it's kinda not so bad," he said. "Ten- to 15,000-gallon spills are big, but that's normal. They've gotten them down to two or three a year. That's a good record for any city in the country."

Now the city is planning to implement an estimated $105 million sewage system project to provide 85% separation of stormwater and sewage, as mandated by the federal government. The city is required to complete the work by June 2025 or face daily fines.

This week the city and Dougherty County officials finalized an agreement on a six-year extension of the special-purpose local-option sales tax that, if approved by voters in November, will provide $33.5 million toward that price tag.

The Albany City Commission in 2021 also earmarked a little more than $10 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds toward the cost.

And, Rogers said, Congress is working on the next Water Resources Development Act legislation, the biennial bill that funds projects for water supply and wastewater infrastructure, flood control, navigation and ecosystem restoration.

While the details aren't finalized, there is the possibility that it could include funding for Albany's project, Rogers said.

"Congressman (Sanford) Bishop and some of his colleagues got a serious amount of money for the Albany sewer project," he said. "I'm not sure if it gets us all the way into the end zone, but it's going to get us into the red zone on this project."

One cause for concern for Flint Riverkeeper is the two spills that have occurred this year at the same lift station. The city reported the spills that occurred on Aug. 10 and in February, and both reportedly were contained without contamination of streams or drinking water.

Both spills were caused by a power failure at the lift station, and the overflow was upstream of Lift Station 4 into the stormwater detention pond at Elm Street and Gordon Avenue. After power was restored to the lift station, the overflow was eliminated.

"We're chatting with the city to see why it's happened at least twice there to see if anything can be done," Rogers said. "It's winding up going into a retention pond, unfortunately. That's still not good, but it's not as bad as the ones that were flowing along the river a few years ago."

Like anything else, once Albany completes the work on the sewage system, it will have to be maintained, Rogers noted. And there are relatively inexpensive ways to divert rainwater flowing off pavement and in ditches and clean and return water to the Floridan aquifer and streams. The systems also will assist in protecting the city's sewage system and decrease the amount of water that has to be treated in the sewage plant.

"There are a lot of things we can do in a city that literally treat that stormwater for grease and fertilizer and oils before it ever hits the pipes," Rogers said. "You can put green infrastructure higher in the system. You can make the water cleaner before it hits the pipes, and you have less water hitting the pipes."

For now, the progress made through the city's investments, which aided in getting federal assistance, and moving toward completion of the project is a good thing, Rogers said.

"Then we can set our aim to maintaining the system, because that takes money," he said. "And we can also begin to enjoy the river more and not have to worry about people getting water-borne infections."