The City of Cayce has something to brag about.

Never mind all of the negative stories swirling around the new mayor’s struggles with the Cayce City Council. Leaders all over Lexington County have something positive to talk about: Cayce’s forthcoming $52.6 million wastewater treatment plant.

A Dec. 4 groundbreaking brought Cayce Mayor Elise Partin, Lexington Mayor Randy Halfacre and other local leaders who donned hard hats and proudly broke ground with gold shovels at the construction site on Old State Road.

It’s a project that deserves more than routine tips of the hat.
“The plant that will be created here will help to create economic development in our county for a long time to come,” Partin said.

Partin says she has been advised that the contractor plans to hire 100 people to help complete the project.

The new treatment plant will not only serve the City of Cayce, but also provide sewer treatment for the Town of Lexington and a host of small communities throughout Lexington County.

It will provide a treatment capacity of 25 million gallons per day, according to American Engineering Consultants, designer of the project — triple that of the current facility.
Plus, it’s not going to jack up taxes.

But the important issue here to environmentalists is that Cayce, unlike some of the other treatment plants in the Midlands, is assuming a role that will likely protect nearby rivers.
It could be that the City of Cayce will be the best river protector around, considering the failures in the Columbia area. Just last week, the Richland County Utilities Division reported a structural failure at the county’s Lower Richland Sewer Treatment Plant. Fortunately, the tank that failed only contained rainwater and posed no contamination risk.

But there have been other problems in the Midlands, including the accidental release of untreated waste and high levels of phosphorus, which can result from the improper use of fertilizers or from construction runoff.

Cayce’s new plant, scheduled to come on line in 2012, will offer more stringent treatment processes for wastewater than any other such plant in the region, according to Bill Bingham, president of American Engineering Consultants.

But what’s even more important to many environmentalists is that the new plant will bring about the closing of at least four smaller plants after it comes on line.
Plans to eliminate discharges from two sewer plants — one run by the Town of Lexington and one operated by Carolina Water Service — are well under way.

As environmentalists have observed in the Columbia area in recent years, the pollution leaks that have plagued the rivers are often from smaller plants.

Last summer, an Alpine Utilities sewer plant in Lexington blew a gasket and wastewater poured into the Saluda and raised bacteria counts to unsafe levels. Alpine paid a $25,000 fine for the mishap.

Smaller plants simply aren’t as efficient as the large operation Cayce is undertaking. They can’t afford it.

“It’s all about money,” Bingham says.

Mike Dawson of the River Alliance, the nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the area’s rivers, says the problem with the small, private plants is that some are “cutting corners” in their operations.

Dawson says it’s also important to have wastewater plants in the hands of elected leaders who have to answer to the public. He says Cayce already has a good record in protecting the environment.

The new plant should be good news for the economy, and the ecology, of Lexington County. 


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