Despite affected owners’ vows to enlist the aid of renowned eminent domain legal experts in their battle to prevent WWTA from crossing their properties with sewer lines, authority members voted 7-2 Wednesday not to delay the current Jan. 15 deadline for implementing such procedures.
WWTA Executive Director Cleveland Grimes said the lines are necessary in order to provide sewer service to residents of the Seven Lakes Development and other nearby properties now and in the future.
On Dec.
9, affected property owners sent a letter to WWTA formally requesting that the deadline be extended in order to give them time to “attempt to resolve this issue without extensive legal involvement.”
The letter was signed by Bill and Janet Coughlin and Joseph and Susan Sentef, who all listed Ooltewah addresses.
During a lengthy, sometimes heated discussion, Dr. Sentef said he is convinced the WWTA’s actions are personal and grow out of the fact that he once employed WWTA chairman Henry Hoss and let him go.
“You need to educate yourself and see whose property you are stealing,” he declared.
Although that incident occurred 12 to 13 years ago and Chairman Hoss has no financial stake in how the Seven Lakes case is resolved, he recused himself from taking part in the matter. Consequently, WWTA member Don Haynes served as acting chairman during the ensuing discussion.
Mrs. Sentef repeatedly asked why WWTA is determined to resort to eminent domain solely in order to benefit developer Emerson Russell.
It was Mr. Russell who requested WWTA assistance in providing sewers for Seven Lakes Development.
But Mr. Grimes said the planned sewer lines will benefit the owners of numerous properties in and around Seven Lakes.
Some of that land is just pasture, Mrs. Sentef said.
“All land was once just pasture,” Mr. Grimes responded.
Other WWTA members agreed.
It is inevitable that the land will be developed, variance committee member Wayne Hamill said. And when it is, he added, properties there should be served by sewers rather than septic tanks.
If WWTA is determined to make sewers available, Mrs. Sentef and other property owners said, then it could do so by installing a pumping station rather than insisting on gravity lines. That way, she said, there would be no need to cross any properties with sewer lines.
“The reason we bought this piece of property was so we could live there and not be disturbed,” she said. “The issue is that we don’t want our property disturbed.”
WWTA representatives said it is possible to redraw plans for the sewer lines so that they cross the affected properties at the spot most convenient for the owners. But it will be necessary to locate lines somewhere on the properties in order to provide gravity sewer service to the area, they insisted.
Pump stations require more upkeep than gravity lines and, consequently, are more expensive. Therefore, it is WWTA policy to utilize gravity lines wherever possible – and it is possible in the Seven Lakes area.