Email Blast -- July 27th 2020

StopChathamNorth

To the Residents of Briar Chapel,

We have been spacing out our emails to make best use of your time, but there was a major event over the weekend that we want to bring you up-to-date on.

Major Sewage Spill

On Sunday, July 26th at 11:11am Kathy Thompson, a Briar Chapel resident, was hiking on the trails that lead up to the dog park on Great Ridge Parkway. She came upon an area with a large volume of standing water. The water had a strong sewage smell. She tracked the spill back to the source and found that sewage was spilling from under the fence at Pump Station A, beside the dog park. When she walked around to the front gate, she saw that large volumes of sewage were gushing from the ground every 3-4 minutes from an underground pipe within the pump station compound. It pooled in the compound and then ran out under the fence and down to the walking trail. From there it flowed another @70 yds to a walking bridge where it pooled and drained into Pokeberry Creek. She recorded what she saw in these three videos: Video 1 , Video 2, Video 3

Shortly after, Kathy called Envirolink and SCN. We reached Integra Water and notified the HOA. An Envirolink representative arrived around 12:30 pm and taped off the area. Envirolink equipment did not arrive until approximately 3:30pm to start work on the repair. From the time that Kathy discovered the spill until work got underway (at least 4 hours), the broken pipe was gushing a large volume of sewage every 3-4 minutes which was soaking into the ground within the compound and all along the trail and then into Pokeberry Creek.

We took additional video while we were onsite with Tom Speer (HOA President) and Dave Washburn (HOA Infrastructure Task Force). Video 4, Video 5

At 9:00pm last night, ONSWC sent out an email confirming that the pipe had been repaired. According to their email, “The areas where overflows occurred are being stabilized with lime this evening and will be mulched and dressed up tomorrow”. We are very concerned that putting down a little lime and mulch on an area that has been saturated with raw sewage for four hours is not adequate. We have notified NC DEQ. We have provided NC DEQ with videos and an accounting of the events and we have asked them about treatment of the affected areas. We want to know what needs to be done and who is responsible for ensuring that it is done properly. The HOA is engaged as well.

We were notified of a second incident at 7:43 p.m. yesterday involving a broken irrigation line. The break resulted in significant amounts of reclaimed water flooding the sidewalk and running directly into a storm drain. (Video 6) Two members of SCN responded and remained onsite until a Quality Landscape representative arrived and was able to shut off the system.

We have sent documentation on this incident to our attorney and we are meeting today to prepare information to send to the Chatham County Commissioners. We will share that information with you as soon as it is complete.

Thank you to all of the residents of Briar Chapel who continue to monitor and report these incidents to SCN.

StopChathamNorth

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Mission Statement

StopChathamNorth is an unincorporated non-profit association representing concerned homeowners within Briar Chapel. StopChathamNorth does NOT support a regional wastewater treatment plant within the residential community of Briar Chapel. We are aware that there are a number of new communities surrounding Briar Chapel that are planning to utilize our WWTP, in addition to the current proposal to add Fearrington Village to our WWTP. We are opposed to all of these plans to expand Briar Chapel’s WWTP for uses outside of the Briar Chapel residential community. We also believe that the WWTP and ONSWC must be fully compliant with all governance and regulatory guidelines to ensure operations do not create nuisance, unhealthy or hazardous conditions for Briar Chapel residents.

For more information: www.stopchathamnorth.com