$610 thousand “due and payable”

The Joint Regional Sewer Authority at Seneca awaits an annual payment from Oconee County. It amounts to $610 thousand. As Bob Winchester, executive director of Oconee’s Coneross Wastewater Treatment Plant, told a committee meeting Thursday, “It’s due and payable.” And the outstanding invoice was a point of discussion last night during the JRSA’s October meeting. The annual payment between County and the JRSA started after the 1996 project to expand county treatment plant capacity and is calculated to help the sewer authority offset the debt from the project. But it remains controversial today, for sewer officials paid off the outstanding debt from that project in 2009. According to Winchester, the annual check from the county is considered as revenue sharing. “It actually has been used for the purpose it was designated. It was to provide sewer in the un-incorporated areas of the county, expansion, extension. Martin’s Creek primarily was the source for this money,” he said. JRSA contracted with a private company to undertake an expansion of its collector system within a growing Martin’s Creek basin—between Seneca and Clemson.