VALDOSTA — The city will soon have a new tool to check waste spilling into area waters.

Valdosta City Council members congregated at the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant, 3108 Wetherington Lane, Tuesday to break ground on a new equalization basin. 

Planned to be completed by October, the new basin will cost about $1.8 million and will paid for by special purpose local option sales tax funds, City Manager Mark Barber said.

The project is in response to a series of spills that happened in December 2019 from heavy rainfall.

“In December …, we had a heavy rain event — 15-16 inches — in our area … with that much stormwater coming into your sewer system and sewer lines, it just overtook the plant,” Barber said. “When we first realized (it) was going to happen, (Utilities) Director (Darryl) Muse and I joked that ‘if you’ll put on a backhoe, I’ll start digging this hole right now and hope it catches it.'”

The new basin’s job is simple: provide added storage capacity for excess stormwater when overflows occur.

In an overflow situation, the excess will be directed to the main basin then the new basin and stored until the treatment facility is ready to process it, Muse said. 

“The way it’s designed to work is if we get excess flows, we’re going to store those flows in the 6.5 million gallons of those excess flows in our primary equalization basin,” he said. “And then, when that one starts to overflow or fill, we’re going to start moving those flows over (to the new basin) for an additional 7.5 to 8 million gallons in capacity.”

Muse said the basin will provide three things: additional capacity to the plant (it will be 42 million total gallons once finished), allowing the plant to operate more as it was designed and better protecting the environment. 

A year after the heavy rains, the city experienced a 7.5 million gallon sewage spill in December 2019 and was fined $122,000 by Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division. The EPD consent order, published April 27, outlined 12 measures for the City of Valdosta to establish and follow, in addition to the $122,000 fine.

The December 2019 spill, caused when an outside contractor failed to reconnect a sensor in the treatment plant, was the largest in recent years in Valdosta and resulted in a tense January public forum between local and North Florida officials and residents. 

The new basin is an exciting one, Valdosta Mayor Scott James Matheson said, that will protect both residents and the environment during overflows and spills

“We’re delivering on a promise — yet another promise — and it’s an extra 7.5 million gallons of protection,” the mayor said. “It’s another layer so we can keep our promise to you and to revitalize our waterways and make them enjoyable for all of us.”

If the additional basin had existed during the heavy rains of December 2018, Barber said the city could’ve handled the overflow better.

“If this would’ve been here then, I think we would’ve had a whole different story,” he said.