City needs $16M for tunnel

Warning that a sewage tunnel serving all of West Ashley and points beyond "is in imminent danger of capacity and structural failure," Charleston Water System officials have asked U.S. House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn for $16 million worth of federal assistance.

Failure of the tunnel could mean no working sewers for the roughly 30,000 homes and businesses whose waste the tunnel carries.

Capacity problems -- more sewage than the pipe in the tunnel can handle -- has been causing sporadic backups of raw sewage, most recently in April in Byrnes Downs.

The two-mile tunnel sits more than 100 feet below the ground just west of Albemarle Road and beneath the playing fields of Porter-Gaud School.

Charleston Water System has been issuing dire warnings about the status of its deep sewer tunnels for about 18 years, and has replaced all but this last section.

Now that the West Ashley Sewer Tunnel's turn has come, the Charleston Water System looking for money.

Clyburn told water system officials Friday that he was already planning to seek $16 million for the project, an amount previously authorized by Congress but never appropriated.

He said the project is clearly needed, and he's happy to help, but wants political cover in return.

"The headlines will be that I'm earmarking money, and that's the worst thing the federal government can do, according to some people," Clyburn told the water system's board and top executives. "I want to be helpful, and I will be, but I'm putting you on notice."

The congressman reiterated his point several times, saying that if he pursues a $16-million earmark for the sewer tunnel project, the water system had better step up and defend the spending and the process for getting the money.

"You get my drift?" Clyburn asked the officials.

Yes, they did, they all assured him.

"We hear you loud and clear," said Kin Hill, CEO of Charleston Water System.

Any federal money for the nearly $43 million project would help reduce the size of a planned bond issue that would be repaid by local ratepayers.

Considering that Clyburn said he had already decided to seek the appropriation, the public Friday meeting with Charleston Water System would seem to have also served the purpose of defending the spending request and the need for the work.

Hill and other water system officials said that the discovery of tunnel collapses and deterioration have raised "dire concerns of catastrophic failure."

Failure of the tunnel and the pipe would mean no sewer service, at least temporarily, for West Ashley and at least parts of Johns Island, Red Top, Hollywood, Meggett, and Ravenel.

The condition of the tunnel, and the tunnels beneath the Charleston peninsula, led to a largely unseen but hugely expensive replacement project that's been mostly completed.

In today's inflation-adjusted dollars, the cost of the six-phase tunnel replacement project is estimated at $224.5 million. The West Ashley Sewer Tunnel is the fifth phase.

"It is, without a doubt, the most expensive public works project undertaken by this organization," Hill said.

The work is costly because it involves carving a roughly 6-foot tunnel through the clay-like earth more than 100 feet below ground, then lining the tunnel and running pipe through it.

A sixth and final phase of the tunnel project would add a new tunnel section in West Ashley that would increase sewer capacity, creating space for all the waste that new developments are expected to generate.

All of the sewage in Charleston goes to the Plum Island Treatment Plant on James Island.

Reach David Slade at 937-5552 or dslade@postandcourier.com.