Georgetown South Sewer Extension Groundbreaking
Watch Chase Azevedo, Director of the Georgetown Municipal Sewer Service, speak to the dedication that Jon Schubarth, Kurt Zehnder, and the Hazen and Sawyer team had to this project.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear speaks about the impacts of the project on 500 local families in this video clip.
In this video, Georgetown Mayor Tom Prather speaks to the long-standing issues plaguing the community and the complexity of this project.
The project team and local dignitaries breaking ground on the project.
(LEXINGTON, KY - October 13, 2021) - The City of Georgetown (KY) recently held a groundbreaking ceremony near the Georgetown Estates Mobile Home Park to celebrate the Georgetown South Sewer Extension project.
Governor Andy Beshear, Mayor Tom Prather, and other local dignitaries gathered to praise the environmental and social impacts this project will have on the community. The $23 million, decade-long project, designed by Hazen and Sawyer, incorporates the mobile home park into the Georgetown Municipal Water and Sewer Service and improves conveyance within the city’s sewer network, including a new interceptor sewer, pump station reductions and improvements, and force main improvements.
Georgetown Estates Mobile Home Park is currently served by two failing privately-owned package wastewater treatment plants that have received numerous notices of violation from the Kentucky Division of Water. “It’s hard to imagine we are only steps away from one of the worst environmental problems in the state of Kentucky. The failing package sewer plants have created, over decades, an environmental and humanitarian crisis,” remarked Mayor Tom Prather at the ceremony.
Approximately 500 families residing at the mobile home park have endured conditions detrimental to their health and were in danger of losing their homes in the absence of a successful solution. “[This project] addresses the needs of many folks who, historically, have been without voice in our community and our government,” the mayor continued, speaking on the project’s environmental justice impacts.
The hurdles the project faced, however, go beyond the well-documented problems in securing funding for disadvantaged communities. Being well outside the traditional service area of the Georgetown Municipal Sewer Service, encompassing two counties, and being on the property of a private enterprise prompted the mayor to liken the complexity of the project to, “threading a needle, shot with an arrow at 100 yards away, with a shifting crosswind.”
Chase Azevedo, Director of the Georgetown Municipal Sewer Service, spoke to the dedication that Jon Schubarth, Kurt Zehnder, and the Hazen and Sawyer team had to this project. “They gave us this cutting-edge design that’s going to fix this problem along with many others,” stating that their work went, “above and beyond.”
Hazen and Sawyer’s design will resolve violations that date back over a decade at the mobile home park and improve the environmental conditions of the Cane Run watershed, which feeds into the city’s groundwater drinking supply. Additionally, affordable housing for 500 families will be preserved along the border of two of the state’s most affluent counties.
