During an Aug. 11 meeting, Wrightsville Beach leaders and staff will discuss the need for a duplicate town sewer line due to the condition of the current one, a 14-inch, 30-year-old pipe that transports all the island’s sewage underneath the Intracoastal Waterway to be treated on the mainland.
In a memo, town manager Tim Owens said he talked to engineering personnel who told him “the town should be concerned about the current condition of the pipe and what appears to be an unacceptable amount of joint deflection in the pipe.”
The pipe’s questionable condition and the associated dangers became an issue in 2014 when real estate company Bailey and Associates, Inc. proposed building boat slips in the Intracoastal near the pipe. The proposed location was not within town property, but the aldermen submitted a formal objection to the project, arguing that construction near the pipe could cause it to fail.
Steve Dellies, assistant public works director at the time, described such a leak as “a minimum of 300 gallons of sewage that we can’t control.”
Owens will recommend the board allow town staff to move forward with a condition assessment of the current line and begin engineering of a redundant line. Given the multiple agencies involved, Owens stated in a memo, the project could take several years.
