John Coffelt, Editor

Manchester Mayor Joey Hobbs during the Jan. 9 Water Commission Meeting criticized the notion in no uncertain terms that the city’s sewer collection system was at or near capacity, while acknowledging that the city does have problems with rainwater inflow and infiltration (I&I).

“You have no capacity problems,” Hobbs said. “Sewer is not the issue. It’s our lines. We are letting too much water in through storm activity. That’s what we’re trying to attack.”

“The belief about capacities and all those things are just fundamentally wrong,” he said.  “When I first came to office, I thought the sky was falling…from all I heard.”

The average daily collection is 1.5 million gallons during dry times. The state has permitted the wastewater plant to discharge 4.3 million gallons per day of treated affluent.  During rainy season the system sees 3 million to 4 million gallons entering the system.  

“I think we have that conversation where I think we are in my short period of time here,” Hobbs said. “We have a system that will always need to be serviced. This is an ongoing problem. We are not going to fix all our problems during anybody’s time on the commission or anybody’s time on Earth.”

During the last rain events, there were three sewer overflows at manholes in the system.

Hobbs advised the commission that the Water Department received a surprise EPA inspection around Nov. 19 of the wastewater collection system, plant and several lift stations.

Auditors did not find any major issues, according to Hobbs. He said there were three or four recommended corrections that will be addressed by the department.

Hobbs said he has attended several high level meetings with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) leadership as part of additional training to better understand the state’s perspective on the city’s sewer system.   

As part of that, Hobbs said he networked with other municipal leaders and heard their sewer problems.

Projects underway

During the Jan. 7 Board of Mayor and Alderman meeting, the city approved a $1.4 million contract to Dukes Root Control to televise over 300,000 linear feet in the Area 1 and 2 portions of the system.

Hobbs estimated that would cover about half of the city’s sewer lines.

That project uses what was left of the city’s $6 million American Recoveries Act money and is one of three new projects that will begin in the next few months.

Hobbs commended Water and Sewer Director Jeffery Perry for their progress making sewer system repairs.

Using newly purchased equipment, the city has performed 16,000 foot of sewer line televising in-house. The work resulted in five repair projects.  

Perry said in December there were several significant repairs made in the system. Cracks were found and repaired in a sewer main, sewer main joints were repaired and a portion of crushed line was repaired in areas near Fred Deadman Park and the Coffee County Fairgrounds.

Perry is working to restructure the department to, among other changes, form a dedicated crew that will follow the televising crew to make repairs on things found with the camera system.

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.