An Orange County neighborhood ripped out its septic tanks to protect Wekiwa Springs. Now it’s sorry.
Mike King helped persuade skeptical neighbors in Sweetwater West five years ago to sign onto a mammoth sewer project — at their personal expense — to protect the delicate Wekiwa Springs from septic-system pollution.
The gated community of more than 180 homes was the first of 17 neighborhoods in Orange County near the springs to buy into a septic-to-sewer conversion, a multiphase project originally estimated to cost $123 million.
But now, more than two years after bulldozers rolled in, King and many other residents have regrets.
“It’s been a nightmare in so many ways for people who live here and invested here,” he said this week, pointing out a sod-less section of a neighbor’s lawn, an unpaved half-lane of street in front of his home and other shoddy work.
The trouble in Sweetwater West is a black eye for the county’s septic-to-sewer conversion efforts, in a neighborhood which officials hoped would become a “showroom” to persuade other neighborhoods to join in.
The projects are intended to improve water quality in the Wekiva River and Wekiwa Springs, diagnosed 15 years ago as impaired by nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from thousands of septic systems in Orange, Lake and Seminole counties. Homes with septic tanks push those chemicals into the springs with every toilet flush.
But county utilities spokesperson Debbie Sponsler said the switch to cleaner sewer hookups is complicated.
“It’s a long process and frustrating for residents. Everything’s underground. Streets are torn up, yards are torn up, sidewalks, everything gets torn up,” she said. “The idea is we’ll put it all back and inspect it. But sometimes you have to tear up an area again to look at stuff and, if things need fixed, fix them. That’s what happened in Sweetwater.”
Long-awaited Wekiwa Springs septic-to-sewer conversion begins with ceremony
Home owners in Sweetwater West had agreed by majority vote to pony up $6,000 each, payable with their taxes over 10 years, to bring in sewer hookups. The alternative under state rules would have been to install more efficient septic systems, but those were estimated to cost between $15,000 and $25,000 each.
Such neighborhood buy-in is critical to securing state and county funding. Orange County and St. Johns River Water Management District kicked in about 90% of the total cost.
Today, the total estimated cost to connect all 20 neighborhoods that are part of the project has ballooned to $145 million because of increased costs for materials and labor. Neighborhoods still weighing the sewer option — three haven’t yet bought in — now face a heftier connection fee of $7,500, $1,500 more than the assessment levied in Sweetwater West.
The project in Sweetwater West, launched in June 2021 with a kickoff ceremony, was expected to wrap up in September 2022 but remains unfinished. Paving crews resurfaced the road from Sweetwater’s main entrance this week.
Residents have vented to the contractor, the county, their homeowners association and on a community Facebook page, sharing videos of damaged roads, photos of abandoned debris piles and commiserating with one another.
They say they have gotten few answers from anyone.
“All the banging, beeping, trash, accidents, and pavement cracks caused by it, too! I am over it,” read one post on the community-only page. “For us in the front it has been going on for 18 months and counting. Cannot wait ’til it’s over!”
Others have lamented the neighborhood’s role as a “guinea pig” for the multiphase project.
“Our neighborhood was beautiful when this started, but now it’s a mess. I don’t know if it’s ever going to look like it did, quite honestly,” said Lisa Lochridge, who moved into Sweetwater West with her husband, Mick, in 2016.
“If I was looking to buy a home in this neighborhood, I’d turn around and leave.”
Some residents said construction equipment was parked in the neighborhood for months without any movement, despite assurances from project officials that road restoration would soon resume.
Amid complaints about the contractor, county officials have shouldered responsibility.
“The contractor was hired by us, so it is us,” said Andres Salcedo, deputy director of Orange County Utilities, answering a reporter’s questions after a community meeting Tuesday. “All this stops with us.”
He blamed “supply-chain” issues caused by the pandemic for slowing the pace of work in Sweetwater West.
While the project has fallen short of the “showroom” quality he envisioned, Salcedo said the county has pre-construction videos of the community and pledged this week to leave it in the “same shape or better, not worse.”
“We’re not done yet,” added David Arms, a utilities engineer who leads community septic-to-sewer meetings.
He said the Sweetwater West conversion is “a project we’re going to be proud of.”
When asked about issues, like crews repeatedly tearing up a road to work on a manhole cover that still juts above the pavement on Branch Hill Court, Arms said he wasn’t familiar with the specifics of individual complaints.
“All the houses are connected and all the services are in and functioning…I know we have a commitment to completing the project correctly,” he said. “If we’ve done something more than once, it’s in an effort to get it right.”
