Steve MacDougall 2018

Lexington Mayor Steve MacDougall pushes the button in Feb. 2018 to turn on pumps to push wastewater from the former Blue Granite wastewater treatment plant near I-20 to a regional treatment facility. A jury now says the town will have to pay more than $7 million for the I-20 facility.

A yearslong fight to eliminate discharges from the former Carolina Water Service wastewater treatment facility near I-20 into the lower Saluda River came to a close Wednesday as the Town of Lexington, which now owns the plant, officially ended the discharge.

Lexington Mayor Steve MacDougall and Congaree Riverkeeper Bill Stangler confirmed to Free Times Wednesday afternoon that the discharge has ended. Wastewater from that facility is now being pumped to a regional wastewater treatment facility in Cayce.

The Town of Lexington took ownership of the Carolina Water plant near I-20 on Feb. 1. At the time, Carolina Water Vice President Bob Gilroy said in a statement that the company had "worked diligently with the town to make sure this has been a smooth transition."

The 2,000 Carolina Water customers who were serviced by the I-20 plant are now Town of Lexington customers.

Congaree Riverkeeper has long been fighting to end the discharge from the I-20 plant into the lower Saluda. Stangler was ecstatic on Wednesday.

"There should not be sewage coming out of that pipe ever again," Stangler told Free Times. "It eliminates a huge source of pollution. This is what we fought for the last six years. ... I've been saying, every time we talk about this, 'We're not there yet. We're not there yet.' Well, we're there. 

"If I had champagne in my office, we'd probably be popping a bottle."

MacDougall noted the discharge was eliminated within 28 days of the Town of Lexington formally taking ownership of the plant near I-20.

"This is a first step in cleaning up our rivers, streams and ponds," MacDougall told Free Times. "For the future of our region we must continue this work."

The final cost Lexington will pay Carolina Water for the plant near I-20 will be determined in court proceedings.

Carolina Water has racked up a host of environmental violations in the last two decades in connection with the I-20 facility. The plant was allowed to dump a certain amount of treated wastewater into the river. However, according to DHEC records, discharges from the plant have failed tests for fecal coliform (a bacteria that often means there’s sewage present), biochemical oxygen demand, (a measure of oxygen depletion, which indicates threat to fish and other species), and “floating solids or visible foam.”

The end of the I-20 plant discharge is the latest bit of momentum in regard to curbing pollution in Columbia's rivers.

In January, Congaree Riverkeeper released its latest sewage spill report, accounting for overflows into area rivers during 2017.

Eleven different Midlands entities reported a total of 203 sewage spills in 2017, with a total of 758,392 gallons spilled. That is down from more than 2.4 million gallons spilled in 2016, and precipitously down from 2015, when 5.6 million gallons of spilled sewage were reported across the Midlands. The massive amount of gallons spilled in 2015 is attributable, in large part, to the devastating flood of October 2015, according to Stangler.

Riverkeeper has been issuing annual sewer spill reports for five years, and 2017 marked the first year in which the spills across the Midlands amounted to less than a million gallons total.

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