Published: July 13, 2008 11:46 am            

TIMES EDITORIAL: It's past time to clean up plant's problems

Hanceville is no stranger to controversy. From the never-ending stream of strangeness emanating from the mayor’s office to the soap-opera-like drama in the police and fire departments, there’s always something that stinks in Hanceville.

Unfortunately, the city’s wastewater treatment plant takes that a little too literally.

For a long time now, the plant has operated in violation of regulations set by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management by polluting Mud Creek. The rules are in place to ensure waterways remain safe for wildlife and, of course, to keep nasty diseases from spreading to humans. When a treatment plant doesn’t follow the rules, it puts the environment and public health at risk.

And, sadly, that hasn’t been enough incentive for the problem to be fixed in Hanceville. As you see on the front page of today’s paper, once again the city’s wastewater treatment plant has run afoul of the rules to such an extent that one official calls it “awful.” in May, some types of pollution were off the scale — literally beyond the point where they could be measured.

If this were a one-time problem, perhaps we could cut Hanceville some slack. But it’s not. It’s just the latest in a long string of issues that indicate a staggering level of incompetence and poor planning at the treatment plant.

Now, in addition to the cost of bringing the plant into compliance with environmental regulations, the Hanceville Water and Sewer Board is having to pay hefty fines to ADEM and defend itself from two lawsuits. No one knows what it will cost to untangle this legal knot, but you can be sure it won’t be cheap. Hanceville residents will end up paying dearly for their water board’s dismal leadership.

Truth is, the Hanceville voters deserve a big part of the blame for not electing people who would tackle this issue a long time ago, before it resulted in expensive fines and legal bills. They should have demanded more from their leaders rather than supporting people who, for whatever reason, never took on the tough but necessary job of properly upgrading and managing the treatment plant so it would comply with state law.

Now that tough job still has to be done. While the treatment plant has a new company managing its operations — a company that deserves more time to sort out the problems — Hanceville remains with its wastewater-spewing clunker that continues to pollute Mud Creek. That has to change, which will probably require a big investment and impeccable oversight by the Water and Sewer Board with cooperation from the city council.

Can that happen? It’s entirely up to the people of Hanceville, who first need to understand the issues and then elect people capable of doing the job.

We hope they can rise to the occasion. This problem — and many others in the city — have stunk far too long already.

        

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