Editor:
Hal Rogers recently awarded the Martin County Fiscal Court $3.1 million to “improve the sewer system.” You’d think free money would be heralded with a public announcement and maybe a parade. Instead, it was quietly awarded by the Big Sandy Area Development District (ADD) at a special meeting called Friday (March 31) afternoon meeting.
No one from the water or sanitation board was informed of the award or invited to the meeting. No one working with the struggling sewer system was consulted on the feasibility of the project. One must wonder why secrecy is warranted or even defensible in the spending of federal tax dollars.
According to the project description on the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority portal, the project will extend Inez’s sewer line from Debord to Davella. It might also fund a capital improvement plan for the Inez and Warfield sewer systems. But the Request for Qualifications for engineers that Big Sandy ADD ran in early May only included the sewer line extension project.
Why would the sanitation board and sewer department be kept in the dark about a plan to extend the sewer system over 3 miles? A closer look at the scope of the project may shine a light on why the public was not meant to know about it until the deed was done and the paperwork signed.
The proposed sewer line would eliminate a private package sewage system that serves an apartment complex in the Davella Community behind the Zip Zone gas station. These apartments are privately owned and operated. To service these apartments the sewer line will have to run all the way back from Davella to Inez picking up all the homes and small businesses along the way adding a total of 97 new customers.
As an environmentalist I am all for getting a working sewer system to all citizens for the health of our streams and our people. As a die-hard democrat I accept using public money to make sure this happens. However, my objections to this allocation are neither personal nor political. They are strictly practical, financial, and moral.
First and foremost, practically, this is a ridiculous idea. The Inez sewer system is broken. The plant cannot process the waste it currently receives, much less deal with this additional waste. Anyone who lives by or even passes the Saltwell or Hardin Bottom areas can smell the problems that need to be addressed there. The sewer plant itself needs approximately $4.1 million in upgrades. Last year the state issued an order requiring the system to rehabilitate the sewer plant immediately to deal with the system’s chronic violations.
No plan for an addition that is not carefully designed and vetted by people who work with and know the system and its present deficiencies should even be considered. Engineers and properly trained technicians must be consulted before this is foisted upon a system that is already in noncompliance. Experts we have consulted assure us that $3.1 million will NOT be enough money to actually complete the proposed project, much less help with the current failing system.
While those 97 customers who will be required to hook on to the system, will share the burden of high sewer bills with the rest of us on the public system, the private owner who collects rent from his apartment complex will be relieved of running the package plant that currently serves his apartment complex, increasing his profits. This can only be described as corporate socialism. Shifting the financial burden from a private investor to the public domain in a county that is dead broke is unfair, irresponsible, and ludicrous.
Finally, this type of scheme is one more example of how morally bankrupt our system of resource allocation has become. While corporations and the wealthy get tax cuts along with these types of federal handouts in the name of “economic development,” working folks who have the taxes automatically deducted from their paychecks get no say in how the funds get distributed.
Nina McCoy
Inez