100-year-old sewer line affecting restaurants in downtown Lexington set to be replaced

LEXINGTON, SC (WOLO) — Town of Lexington officials say they’ve secured a plan to replace a failed sewer line that’s almost 100 years old .

The isolated sewer line that failed just over a year ago was installed back in 1925.

But the problematic pipe can’t be repaired or replaced, because in the 1940’s, the building that’s currently home to Groucho’s Deli restaurant was built on top of it.

To help maintain normal sewer service, the Town of Lexington placed a utility pump truck next to businesses as a temporary fix.

Kolbie Smiley is on the management team at O’Hara’s Bakery and Café and says one issue has been their water sporadically starting and stopping.

Another is the smell outside their business.

“So like whenever we walk in to work, or people coming in to enjoy breakfast, nobody really wants to smell sewage, before eating or before going in an hour or so to work on some stuff,” she says.

Smiley says they appreciate the town’s efforts, but looks forward to the problem being permanently fixed.

“There are some complaints I get from customers about parking, which has been fixed mostly, but that smell I still get quite a bit. But it would help a lot to get this fixed, and it would help our business a lot,” she says.

Councilman Todd Carnes says a permanent solution is here.

“We’re super excited. We do have a solution. It’s fully engineered. We’re soliciting bids right now, they’ll be coming in. And so we’re actually relocating the entire sewer main from up here near the buildings all the way down by the road, and it required cooperation from all these businesses up and down the road… running new service lines. But we’ll have a long term solution,” he says.

Carnes explained the issue in detail by saying, “There’s a sewer main that runs up and down maiden lane, that services all these buildings and they tie into it. And that sewer main is the 100 year old line that we’re going to replace. And we’ll move it down by the road, and so it’s an entire shift of the sewer main that services these buildings. So we had to have a lot of cooperation, we had to go after a lot of different easements, from these individuals, we certainly appreciate their cooperation. Because it’s tight spaces working downtown like this. And our downtown is thriving, but we’ve got some 100 year old infrastructure. Primarily this line. Once we fix this, then we’re up and running and we’re set for the next few decades.”

Once construction on the transition begins, Carnes says the project should take no longer than 90 days — with minimal disruption to businesses .

“That would be awesome. Especially in summer, it’s a little hotter, so that heat with that smell is not gonna be a good mixture. But I would love to see that happen this summer. That would be great for our business and for the Town of Lexington,” Smiley says.