The Greenwood City Council has deemed a state of emergency over a sewer-line collapse on Browning Road and Grenada Boulevard in order to facilitate its repair.
Although the city declared the collapse of the 8-inch line on Browning Road an emergency at Tuesday’s council meeting, City Attorney Don Brock said at a special-called meeting Thursday the council needed to deem it a different way.
According to a city statute, the council needed to deem the collapse a state of emergency to “dispense with the normal bidding process required under law.”
There was no discussion of who the city might hire.
Council President Ronnie Stevenson asked why Mayor Carolyn McAdams couldn’t deem it an emergency.
Brock replied the council technically needed to be the one to make the declaration. He noted that in the opinion of Eddie Curry, director of the city’s wastewater treatment division, the collapse “is an emergency.”
Curry said the city needed to move forward to avoid any future sewer-line collapses in that area. The repairs would be for Browning Road, which collapsed last week, and Grenada Boulevard, which collapsed earlier this month.
A different section of Browning Road’s sewer line collapsed earlier this year.
Curry said Tuesday that the line’s collapse could be from old age and large amounts of rain earlier in the year.
Curry said the plan is to repair not only the sewer lines but also to line them to avoid further breaks.
“We have to deem the crumbling pipes an emergency,” he said. “We replaced it on Grenada Boulevard but if it breaks the next 100 feet down, then you are back in the same ballpark. So we are going to go ahead and line it” Curry said.
He said he hopes to do repairs and line replacements from Browning Road all the way to Hope Street.
The line has been bypassed until the repairs have been made.
• Contact Lauren Randall at 581-7239 or lrandall@gwcommonwealth.com.
