March 7-- The City of Lyons in saving millions of dollars and increasing the distribution capacity of its wastewater treatment plants in a move that has major economic development implications for Toombs County.
At its March city council meeting, the council selected the low bid from McLendon Enterprises of Toombs County of $5,871,623.36 to upgrade the city's north and east wastewater treatment plants and to build a sewage main connecting the two plants.
The connector enables the city to shift treatment capacity to where it's needed most, according to Mayor Willis NeSmith, "A forced main pipe that is actually going to be able to force main it from the East Plant to the North Plant, and vice versa, so if one of them is getting close to capacity we can pump it to the other plant and that's a great thing for us. That's going to help us at our North plant to be able to give us about another two to three hundred thousand gallons a day capacity for the industrial park. We're looking at about 400,000 gallons additional capacity we can offer potential industries."
Two years ago the city council was stunned when the lowest bid on the project was nearly $17 million dollars, so it went back to the drawing board and allowed contractors to design their own approaches to solving the city's wastewater treatment problem. McLendon Enterprises was one of four companies that took part in the process.
"We're looking at around $6 million we're going to be spending to get all this done. These plants will be able to go another 30 years and that's going to be a great savings. It's taken a long time, but we feel like the time and heartache we'll been through is going to be well worth it," the Mayor said.
The shortage of wastewater treatment capacity at the Toombs County Industrial Park on U.S. north of Lyons has limited the number of companies interested in locating in the park's new "spec" building.
Toombs County Development Authority Director Michelle Johnson says the action by the Lyons city council will make Toombs County more competitive recruiting new industries.
Article courtesy of Vidalia Communications Corp.
