Fair Bluff residents should be able to drink water from the town’s new well in December, engineer and project manager Carter Hubard from the W.K. Dickson Company told the town council during its meeting Tuesday. Hubard predicted that construction will be finished in October; however, due to supply chain delays, a backup generator to run the pump in case of electric outage won’t arrive until next year.
Town Planner Al Leonard said the council reacted with “optimism and thankfulness” to the news that, “Six months into the [fiscal] year, the water and sewer fund has shown a $2,000 profit.” Historically, he said, that utility fund “has really been a money loser.” Leonard said that relatively dry weather and recent replacements of cracked sewer lines had contributed to the slight profit because less rainwater is now infiltrating the system.
Leonard said the town council voted unanimously to hire Adams and Company engineers to apply for another round of state grant money in May, to be used for further sewer line replacements.
Leonard also said that, after a favorable recommendation at the state level, federal officials had indicated that they would be willing to reconsider Fair Bluff for a $2.8 million BRIC grant. The money would pay for demolishing and hauling away flood-damaged downtown buildings. The town has now purchased two of those structures using previously acquired grant money, one on Main Street and one on Railroad Street, Town Attorney Scott Sessions told the council during the meeting.
The next step is for the town’s engineers to submit a plan covering how they expect to manage stormwater with the envisioned park that would replace downtown. “We think of this as a positive sign,” Leonard said after the meeting.
