Roll-out garbage cans on the horizon

  If any of you practical minded husbands are thinking about surprising your wife with a new garbage can this Christmas, if you live in Pageland, you can cross that item off your holiday shopping list. The Town of Pageland is planning on providing new roll out carts for all our customers sometime next year. The Town budget for next year includes funds for the new roll out carts, which will be paid for by a one dollar increase in the monthly garbage collection fee.

The roll out carts will help to make our Town's trash collection service more efficient. Presently, our sanitation crew has to pick up trash in a variety of containers. Some of these containers are in poor condition or difficult to pick up. In some cases, our workers have to resort to taking the bags of trash out of the containers in order to carry them to the truck. This slows down the process of trash collection since multiple trips back and forth to the can are often necessary.
In some cases, residents have more trash than will fit in their can. They place their excess trash bags beside the can, which makes them a tempting target for stray dogs to rip open and scatter the trash. The new roll out carts will have plenty of storage capacity and will come with a secure lid to prevent dogs from creating a mess. This will help to make Pageland more attractive and spare homeowners from the chore of picking up scattered trash.
I don't know of another town in the county that doesn't already have roll out carts. Most rural trash collection services also rely on roll out carts. Pageland needs to modernize its trash collection service and the roll out carts will allow us to do that. So, instead of buying your wife a garbage can, maybe you can get her a new broom, or better yet, a box of chocolates this Christmas.
In other matters, I know everyone wants to know when the sewer line from Pageland to Alligator Rural Water's new sewer treatment plant in McBee is going to be built. This project has been awaiting federal funding for the past two years. Recently, the Town and Alligator were advised by Rural Development officials that it will be necessary to split the $18 million project into phases. The good news is that we are hoping to begin the first phase of the project early next year.
The initial work will involve fixing leaks which allow rainwater to enter the Town's aging sewer system. This storm discharge can double the flow at our treatment plants, which significantly impacts the cost of treatment. We also plan to upgrade our water meters to a radio read system. This will allow us to read meters without sending a meter reader to the customer's home. An added benefit is that water use can be monitored on a daily basis and customers can be notified quickly if they have a leak. The third part of the initial phase will be to refinance the Town's existing water and sewer debt at a much lower interest rate. This will produce major cost savings, which will help pay for the new system.
The second phase of the project will be to construct the pipeline. Alligator and the Town are splitting the cost of this project. The Town will share in future revenues from all customers who connect to the pipeline, which will run beside Hwy. 151 from the N.C. state line  through Pageland and Jefferson to the treatment plant south of McBee. This new line will provide sewer service on the entire length of the Pageland bypass, which will make future development possible in areas which now lack sewer service. This project is extremely important not just to Pageland but to all of western Chesterfield County. It will be at least another two years before the pipeline is built and put into operation.
Before I sign off, I want to thank the town council members who put up and take down the American flags downtown for all the military holidays. These flags are put up to honor our veterans. I hope all our veterans had an enjoyable Veteran's Day and I want to wish everyone a Happy Thansgiving.