Enforcement action anticipated from the state

The Oconee Joint Regional Sewer Authority commissioners were told last night that the operations can soon anticipate some kind of enforcement action from the state agency concerned by two major sewer overflows. The overflows occurred in February and April. Chris Eleazer, JRSA executive director, reported on a meeting that he had last week with a DHEC representative. It’s Eleazer’s takeway from the meeting that the enforcement action would fall short of a consent order and, instead, take the form of a compliance agreement. DHEC apparently is taking a dim view of disagreements within the policy-making board of the JRSA. “They (DHEC) feel the cities are not working well together, and they said decisions made by the board need to be in the best interests of the Sewer Authority as a whole and not for each of the cities individually,” Eleazer told the board just before it voted down a plan to disburse sewer monies to the member cities.