Candidates say Tega Cay scored big in buying the utility. See what the data says.

Current and would-be Tega Cay leaders roundly praise the decision. The best, some say, the city has made in recent memory. A purchase that changed more than perception for peninsula residents.

“That was one of the greatest things we’d ever done,” said Ron Kirby, one of seven candidates for two Tega Cay City Council seats.

Voters go to the polls Nov. 7.

Kirby and fellow candidate Chris Larsen both sat on council when the city purchased the former Tega Cay Water Service in 2014. Candidates Alicia Dasch, Abigail Duval, Gus Matchunis and Heather Overman lived through it as city residents. Even candidate Mike Mistretta, who hasn’t been in the city two years, recognizes the $5.85 million decision was a defining point for his city.

“I wasn’t here when we bought that obviously,” Mistretta said, “but it seems to be one of the best decisions that this city made.”

That sentiment was near universal at a recent candidate forum, as vote-seekers discussed how city utilities should be handled in a growing city. When the city bought the private utility it added about 1,700 water and sewer customers in the oldest sections of Tega Cay. At the time, more customers than the city had on is own utility serving newer portions.

Candidates say the lack of sewage spills since has been dramatic. The numbers show, they aren’t wrong.

Since the start of 2016, there have been 21 York County wastewater spills reported to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. Only four occurred in Tega Cay. Spill numbers follow what one might expect based on population and system size. Rock Hill has had nine, followed by Fort Mill with five and then Tega Cay. Lake Wylie, York and York County all reported one each.

Spill size paints an even more favorable picture. The estimated 1,452 gallons released in the almost two-year stretch is less than 3 percent of the 56,552 total gallons — all spill sizes are estimates — countywide. Rock Hill, Lake Wylie and York have a combined eight individual spills with more sewage released than all of Tega Cay produced in that span.

It wasn’t always that way.

The city bought the former Tega Cay Water Service in the summer of 2014. In the 10 months prior to closing, that company had 42 spills. An combined 298,970 gallons made up 75 percent of all York County spills in that stretch, and 7 percent of all spills statewide.

In more than 24 months after the city took ownership, there were 14 spills as the city worked to upgrade the aging system. Still, about 40 percent of York County spills in that time, but down considerably from the peak problem period.

Candidates say continued investment needs to be made. Not only to avoid spills, but improve water service overall. Overman said service is “leaps and bounds” better than before the city bought the utility.

“They really made our water safe,” she said.

Dasch recalls the frustration she had toward the end of Tega Cay Water Service. And the “great decision” the city made to get rid of the company.

“I remember getting a lot of calls for a few years, it seemed like, where my phone would ring and it would be an automated teller-type person, and they’d tell me about a sanitary sewer overflow,” she said.

“And it was over and over and over and over again.”

Matchunis doesn’t need reminding.

“I can remember not that long ago, I had a lift station in my backyard,” he said. “And there was a big red light on top of it, and there was an alarm on it. And it would go off, and it would go off hour after hour after hour.”

He’d call the company, get an answering service in Illinois and find out nobody was on site, but that they’d send someone from maybe an hour outside of Tega Cay.

“The whole time this is going on there’s sewage spilling in our lake,” Matchunis said.

The Fort Mill Times wrote about the Matchunis family back in 2014, following one of the mostly publicly decried incidents. Matchunis had children swimming off a cove on Labor Day when he saw men with protective clothing coming out to start testing or cleaning the water. Swimmers in the area hadn’t been made aware of any spill.

Now, Matchunis said he credits anyone involved in the decision.

“We’re not a laughingstock anymore,” Matchunis said.

Kirby said much of the credit goes not just to council members then, but city residents. He’d first heard the idea of Tega Cay purchasing the utility in 1997, then for less than $2 million. It took public discontent to push the decision. Still, Larsen said, the decision wasn’t simple.

“That was quite a task,” he said. “One, we had to get the financing for it. We had to go outside the box to get that financing for it, and then we also had to get the financing to fix the infrastructure.”

Larsen said plenty of work remains. The reason spills were happening was an old pipe system. The city has been working to update it, but it takes time and money. The important part is, Larsen said, spills aren’t hurting Lake Wylie.

“We’re not done with the infrastructure yet,” he said. “And when it is done, it’s going to become a business. It’s going to be a money-making business. Not that we’re in the business to make money and be a business, but it will come back to the city and (residents) will realize a reduction in their costs.”

Bringing candidates to their potential roles in improving the utility. All say they want continued investment to improve infrastructure. Duval said it’s “worth a look” and how funding breaks down between TCUD-I (newer parts of Tega Cay) and TCUD-II (older sections purchased in 2014), though she and others agree there isn’t a way to combine the two systems into one.

“It’s never made sense in my brain why all of Tega Cay supports the funding of TCUD-I, but when it came to supporting the funding and needing the funding to buy and refurbish TCUD-II, that cost was solely passed on to the residents of TCUD-II. Again, I might be missing something but in my brain I still can’t make that make sense.”

Mayoral candidates and current council members Dottie Hersey and David O’Neal say the system is in considerably better shape now than it was when the city bought it.

“Buying (TCUD-II) was probably the biggest and most difficult decision that has faced a city council, certainly in my eight years and looking back in history, maybe even longer than that,” Hersey said.

Both say the bond setup and other reasons preclude the city from joining the two utilities entirely, though money collected from residents is largely used together now.

“There’s not going to be a lot of ways to integrate those two systems in the near future,” O’Neal said. “That’s why they’re separate and that’s why they will remain separate.”

Hersey and O’Neal agree water rates shouldn’t include a city markup.

“Our hands are tied a bit,” Hersey said. “We have to buy our water from Fort Mill. When we do buy it, we don’t pass on anything but the base cost of what we pay.”

O’Neal worked for some time with a citizen group pushing for the purchase several years ago. Hersey sat on the council voting to purchase. They say the accomplishment is one all residents can be proud of, and appreciate. At a time, Hersey wasn’t sure she was going to vote to buy the utility. Now, with data showing the difference made, she is glad the city did what it did.

“We did our homework,” Hersey said, “and we got it right.”

This story was originally published October 31, 2017 at 3:36 PM with the headline "Candidates say Tega Cay scored big in buying the utility. See what the data says.."