When a failing septic system serving the 34-bed Maple Heights Rest Home on Chub Lake Road caused public health officials to threaten to close the rest home if the unhealthy septic problem were not soon corrected, the rest home’s owner Kenneth Ramsey of Danville, Va. approached county commissioners for assistance. What resulted was a four-way agreement involving Ramsey, county government, the City of Roxboro and the Person County Board of Education. The arranged solution called for extending a new sewer line from the rest home east along Chub Lake Road to tie into the sewerage pump station that was built to serve Stories Creek Elementary School. But for Maple Heights to tap into the pump station, the station had to be owned by the city rather than Person County Public Schools. So the school board agreed to transfer ownership to the city. The city agreed to take ownership of the pump station provided the county agreed to make certain modifications to the pump station, and the county agreed to do so. Meantime, Ramsey agreed to put in a gravity flow sewer line from the rest home to the pump station. That line was engineered and permitted by the state in 2006.

On Monday of this week, Assistant County Manager Paul Bailey, also the county engineer, reported to county commissioners that the pump station upgrades recently were put out for contract bids and the bids came in ranging in cost between $78,000 and more than $122,000, for a project that originally had been estimated to cost $45,000.

Bailey explained, however, that subsequent negotiations resulted in the city agreeing to do a certain amount of the work on its own, and the contractor revised his low bid to $59,100. He recommended the county authorize expenditure up to that amount for the pump station upgrade.

He suggested, too, that the cost could be covered from the county’s Water & Sewer Fund, which is funded from the portion of utility service fees charged by the city and shared with the county for utility lines that extend into the county outside the city limits. The fund is reserved exclulsively for water and sewer projects.

Bailey said the fund has a balance of $51,573, but that another payment from the city was forthcoming after July 1 and before payment for the upgrade would be due to the contractor. There should be enough money in the fund by that time to cover the upgrade cost, Bailey said, inasmuch as quarterly payments to the fund average about $8,000 each.

Commissioners went on to approve the expenditure as proposed.

The pump station upgrade is to be performed this summer.