CHAPIN, S.C. — It's no news that the Town of Chapin is growing, but you can't have growth without accommodating infrastructure.
In this case, it's wastewater management.
"As the years went on and Chapin evolved and the EPA regulations evolved, obviously we had to meet more stringent limits and we had additional flows for the development that was coming up in Chapin," Chapin Utilities Director Rick Bryan said.
Last month, town council met to discuss the final step in the first phase of the wastewater plant changes that began back in 2018.
Bryan said starting this month, construction will begin on the wastewater lagoon to clean out and demolish half of it. He said the other half will be used as an equalization basin for a backup wastewater reserve in times of heavy rain.
"Whenever you quit using an existing plant, any kind of plant, EPA and DHEC require that you abandon that plant properly because obviously that plant has been exposed to pollutants for a long time. And the same thing happened with our lagoon. Now that our new wastewater plant is up and running, then it's our responsibility now to properly abandon the lagoon," Bryan said.
Bryan said the town's utilities department received their lagoon construction permit from DHEC in May 2023. Once this happened, they bid out to the project to contractors. After they break ground this month, DHEC will require written quarterly updates until the work is finished.
Bryan tells News 19 the new plant currently holds and processes 2.4M gallons of wastewater a day. That's double of what it used to be before 2018. He adds that future phases of construction allow for the plant to process 4.8M gallons a day.