D uring a lengthy report on March 5 to the Manchester Water and Sewer Committee, Mayor Joey Hobbs briefed the board about a range of findings by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation regarding the wastewater system.

Hobbs said that a lack of long-term planning has plagued the city, yet offered an optimistic outlook moving forward.

“Where we hit a rut is looking at actual planning, not looking out three, five, seven years,” Hobbs said. “That’s what we’re starting to do, from big projects to little projects.”

“Our problem is in the collection system. It’s not with the plant. There are problems with the plant and that was maintenance related. Our problem is in collection. There’s not much we can do but keep working. (Water and Sewer Director) Lonnie (Foley) has teams that go out an attack the problems from the Duke Root Report…. they go out and fix that. We don’t let it stack up to a big work load.”

www.manchestertimes.com Hobbs reported to the committee that two smaller complaints against the city had been closed and that the city is working closely with TDEC to comply with the recent order of compliance related to the sewer moratorium.

Pretreatment violations

Hobbs said that the city has had eight or nine notices of violations related to pretreatment compliance program.

The pretreatment program is an agreement with area industries related to the content and volume of wastewater they add to the city sewers. That affluent must be tested and the details of those test recorded.

“All of these violations are predating Director (Lonnie) Foley,” Hobbs said. “We haven’t had this problem since he’s come on board.” The response to the notices was returned to TDEC on March 3 and the complaint is considered closed.

Notice of unreported overflows

Another recent complaint to TDEC has also been closed related to unreported sewer manhole overflows during recent heavy rains.

According to the TDEC data viewer the issue is resolved.

“(The) Complainant emailed TDEC and several members of the City of Manchester on Jan. 30, 2026, about no TDEC submittals for overflows this complainant had seen occurring on Jan. 25, 2026, for B49, B58, E38, and I69. This citizen emailed TDEC again concerning the same issue on Feb. 3, 2026.

The resolution submitted by the city and approved by the state has provided the way for citizens to notify the city of future discharges by contacting the Water Department Pretreatment Coordinator at (931) 4348907 or by email at parni@cityofmanchestertn.gov.

Hobbs said that on Jan. 26 the city reported to the state 10 manhole overflows during a 3.54 inch rain and rejected pervasive social media rumors that the city is trying to underreport overflows. Water and Sewer crews drive around and visually inspects as many of the 4,200 manholes in the collection system as possible, according to Hobbs.

“We had a citizen who found four more for us, but instead of calling us, discussing it and letting us know so we could report them, she reported them for us,” Hobbs said.

“We contacted the individual who helps us report all our problems; we gave (her) all the (contact) numbers and said we are not trying to not report them. If you see something and we don’t, just let us know,” Hobbs said.

City not appealing TDEC moratorium

Hobbs said during the meeting that the city would not appeal a consent order that places the city back under a sewer moratorium and that city and water department leadership met with TDEC officials to further define what the order means specifically.

The order was issued due to the number of sewer overflows that the city had through December 2025, a slightly higher number than during 2024.

“Lonnie started in September or October, and we are committed to fixing these rather than just letting things get worse,” Hobbs said.

Hobbs disputed media reports that TDEC issued the city a $146,000 fine, saying that the city would only be fined $29,200 if it meets certain deadlines listed in the order.

“For instance, we have 31 days to send them a report to tell them all the taps we put in during 2025,” Hobbs said. “If we don’t do that by March 15…they will fine us $20,000. We have no intentions of being fined any more than the $29,200. Let’s make that very clear we have no intention of being fined $146,000 for what we didn’t do.”

This moratorium differs from the self-imposed moratorium that the city was under from March 15, 2024 until recently. The selfimposed moratorium allowed the city to add taps by the amount of flow removed from the system.

The cause of the overflow is inflow and infiltration during heavy rains. According to Hobbs, increased flow from growth has little impact on the day-to-day flow in the city. The sewer plant on no rainy days actually has seen a decrease in what comes in during dry times.

“Manchester receives rain 114120 days of the year….for the other 2/3 of the year, our system runs at 50% capacity and we don’t have any overflows,” Hobbs said.