Current Albany leaders deal with ‘sewer can’ long kicked down the road
Special Photo from Thronateeska Heritage Center Archives
By Tom Seegmueller
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ALBANY – “Kicking the can down the road” is a phrase that long has been associated with political inaction. Instead of referencing the practice of kicking a can ahead of oneself while walking along a road, the political connotation references metaphorically deferring any conclusive action toward a solution in the immediate future … just let the next group worry about it.
That is certainly an apt description of action — or, rather, inaction — related to issues with the city of Albany’s current sewer crisis. In a recent series of articles highlighting the city’s sewer system Herald Editor Carlton Fletcher noted, “The sheer magnitude of the number is almost incomprehensible … $234 million.”
That’s the price tag Constantine Engineering, a firm hired by the city of Albany to analyze the city’s aged sewer system, calculated to be necessary to solve the problem.
Albany City Manager Sharon Subadan said, “It’s been building over years and decades as the sewer system in the city has aged. Because action wasn’t taken in the past, we’ve reached this point. But we knew this could not be put off any longer. That’s why this, and the previous City Commission, have worked to come up with a comprehensive solution. It is no longer good enough to keep putting Band-Aids on the problem.”
To say that this is not a new problem would be an understatement. A headline from the Dec. 3, 1954, edition of The Albany Herald obtained from the South Georgia Archives at Thronateeska Heritage Center reads. “City Manager Sees Millions To Be Spent in Sewage Work.”
The article reports that then-City Manager Carey Burnett addressed the Rotary Club on problems related to the city’s combined storm and sewer system.
“… (A) competent engineering company has been working (on the problem) for months, and which will soon be completed,” Burnette said. “Other neighboring cities much earlier came to grips with the problem. But now Albany’s rapid growth demands doing something about it.”
It was reported that the estimated cost of overhauling the sewer system would be $4 million and, “could be defrayed by levying a sewage service charge on householders and others using the city’s sanitary sewers.”
The article’s closing sentence, “When the master plan is completed in 1955, it will be necessary to buckle down to doing a job which has been too long delayed” turned out to be prophetic.
Kicking that political can down the road 56 years to March 5, 2010, another article in The Albany Herald focusing on downtown development said that one of the city’s greatest challenges is separating its storm water and sanitary sewer system.
“Serious consideration will likely be given to dedicating millions to that endeavor under Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax VI,” interim Downtown Manager James Taylor said. “That’s likely to be a project that approaches $100 million before it’s all said and done, and that would include dealing with the sewer downtown. So we would likely do it in incremental portions until the project is done.”
Kick that can down the road another decade, and you reach today’s price tag of $234 million. While it might be easy to write this cost variance off to the impact of inflation, by calculating the $4 million projected in 1954 to make the then-already-long-overdue repairs with the accepted inflation rate of 853.1%, the modern equivalent is only $38,125,502. Leaving an increase unrelated to inflation of $195,874,498.
For the past 66 years, 19 mayors and numerous city managers and commissioners have been kicking this sewer “can” down the road. Today the impact of potential fines for environmental damage increase its financial impact beyond the cost of replacement and repair. History shows the cost of a solution will not get cheaper. The money necessary for appropriate action can only be generated by the same solutions previous can-kickers faced: user fees and loans seek matching funds or grants.
There are no easy answers, but one thing has become clear: This city can not get any cheaper.
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