Scranton brings much-needed water to residents

SCRANTON — Crews are installing water lines along High Hill, Anderson Bridge and Borkowitz roads outside Scranton, an area where many residents’ wells have gone dry or become contaminated.

This past week, the work has been taking place along Anderson Bridge Road, northeast of town.

Scranton Mayor Terry Knotts said the town has been working with residents, regardless of whether they would be tapping onto the extended city water system, to make sure their yards are repaired after the new lines were placed underground.

So far, town officials have gotten no complaints, he said.

“I’m usually a yard person — I like to keep my yard clean — (but) I was so excited to see the holes being dug in my yard yesterday,” Anderson Bridge Road resident Lynn McGee said Friday.

One resident has been without water for the past few years and joked that he was so happy that he didn’t mind if the town ran the new line over his house, Knotts said.

McGee, one of that resident’s neighbors, said she’s glad to see the project moving forward because she’s saddened whenever she sees the water source next door — barrels collecting rainwater under the eaves. The well went dry, and digging deeper was unproductive, she said.

McGee’s family has had its own water troubles, as well. The water pressure is so low that someone can’t take a shower while someone else is doing the dishes, she said. She can hear the pump “stressing” whenever it activates, she said.

Moreover, McGee said, the water has made her daughter and her mother sick. She said both have been diagnosed with infections of Helicobacter pylori, or H. pylori, which can cause ulcers to develop in the lining of the stomach or duodenum, the beginning of the small intestine.

Based on her career in the medical field, she thinks contaminated water is the source, and the family continues to buy drinking water, she said.

McGee has lived on the property and used the same well for 19 years, although she thinks the contamination has developed only in recent years, she said. She also has a 3-year-old son, but any contamination in the well has not made him ill, she said.

Now that residents see the work taking place, “we’re getting more people in here every day wanting to hook onto it,” said Knotts, the mayor.

By the time the project is done, he hopes residents in the area receiving new lines will hook onto town water at a 99 percent rate, he said.

Currently, water taps are $300 for customers who sign up as part of the project, whereas the regular rate for out-of-town customers is $400 plus the cost of connecting the tap to the residence, Knotts said.

“If you’re smart and that water line’s going by your house, you’ll get a tap put in now, because it’s a backup you’ll need,” Knotts said.

In addition, the grant funding the project will allow qualifying low-to-moderate-income residents to have a tap installed and hooked to their residence at no cost, Scranton Town Clerk Kay Floyd said.

The town has nearly 400 water customers and expects 75 to 80 new customers when the project is done, Floyd said.

With leftover money from the project, the town also is looking to run lines down some smaller roads that include about five houses not originally in the project, Knotts said.

The project is being funded with a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant with a local match of $64,000. Florence County has provided $40,000 toward the match, and Scranton pulled the remainder from the $29,380 set aside in its town water department fund, Knotts said earlier this year.

Scranton might try for another grant to extend water lines farther down Anderson Bridge Road, but the purpose is not simply to expand Scranton’s water system, but to ensure everyone has access to quality water, Knotts said.

“Our goal is to service all these roads and streets and everything on this project instead of going further,” he said.

Scranton’s water system covers about four miles, and the project will add five miles’ worth of lines, according to town officials.

Crews are in their third week of work, and the main line will be completed in about a month, while the whole project should be finished in a couple of months, said Gary Smetana, owner and vice president of W&S Underground Inc., the Florence company responsible for the water line installation.

The lines will run as follows:

• High Hill Road from town limits to a point just past Yarborough Road
• Anderson Bridge Road from town limits to Union School Road
• Borkowitz Road from Anderson Bridge Road almost to U.S. 378

Scranton also recently extended water lines south to four houses along U.S. 52 with the help of funding from Florence County, Knotts said.

Knotts said he hopes to work with Lake City and Coward to tie all three cities’ water systems together in case of emergencies. Scranton and Coward already are tied together in case of an emergency, and Coward is tied in with Lake City at a point along U.S. 52, he said.