As additional growth is needed in the Memphis suburbs, maintaining enough sewer capacity in areas still serviced by the City of Memphis is an ongoing struggle.

Memphis is at capacity for much of its sewer system and also serves around 70% of Bartlett, 100% of Germantown, and small portions of Lakeland, Millington, and unincorporated Shelby County. 

“It’s stinky business,” joked Bartlett Mayor David Parsons, who will meet with Memphis officials in the coming weeks to discuss the issue.

Bartlett dealing with impact of Fletcher Creek sewer basin issues

The lack of adequate sewer connections or capacity has hindered development in recent years through the Interstate 40 corridor in Memphis, Cordova, Bartlett and Lakeland.

“We are committed to helping our Tennessee sister cities where we have long-term partnerships,” Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said. “We want our Tennessee sister cities to grow, and we will do all we can to foster that growth.”

He notes that Memphis worked with Bartlett to provide sewer capacity for the new Tennessee College of Applied Technology facility that opened last year. Memphis also paid for a study on how to resolve sewer capacity issues at the new Union Depot mixed-use project at Stage Road and U.S. 70 in Bartlett.

Memphis is investing $2 billion through 2037 to improve its sewer infrastructure, and one of the more cost-effective ways is adding wastewater storage or holding tanks in strategic locations that can release flow into the system at off-peak hours.

Strickland said the improvements are needed for to enhance growth along the I-40 corridor both in Memphis and Bartlett.

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Memphis has been under a consent decree from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 2012 and has spent about $500 million in compliance efforts since then, according to Memphis Director of Public Works Robert Knecht.

“We’re wrapping up in our final year of the consent decree,” Knecht said. “Thinking about all of the growth we would like to see, a couple of years ago we embarked on an ambitious master planning effort.”

That initiative involves improvements to the city’s collection system as well as its two wastewater treatment plants both built in the 1970s. Those facilities treat about 60 billion gallons of wastewater annually and serve approximately 3,200 miles of sanitary sewers.

“So we’re one of largest wastewater providers in the region,” Knecht said. “And we also have huge industries that we serve. We’re the 17th-largest city in the United States in terms of industries that we serve.”

Memphis is getting ready to install two wastewater holding tanks along the vicinity of Interstate 40, costing about $12 million. One on Hillshire Drive is likely to be under construction later this year. Another near Bellevue Baptist Church at the Appling exit could get underway early next year.

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“We do anticipate a third one along that I-40 corridor, and the reason we want to build three on the Memphis side there is we want that area to grow,” Strickland said.

And many more holding tanks are planned in the northern and southern parts of Memphis.

Lakeland

Sewer capacity issues are hindering new development in North Shelby County suburbs like Lakeland and Bartlett.

Lakeland is working to remove itself from the Memphis wastewater system and has two sewer interceptor projects in various stages of planning. The Clear Creek interceptor is on the east side of the city.

Emily Harrell, the suburb’s engineering director, said the current Clear Creek interceptor is close to capacity.

At an estimated $17 million, Phase 1 will include installing a 42-inch main to run from Lakeland’s treatment plant to Chapel Hill Drive. The project is expected to take 18 months.

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The Evergreen planned development at Evergreen and Old Brownsville Road, along with Chapel Lakes and The Estates at Chambers Chapel on Chambers Chapel Road are among the developments waiting on completion of Phase 1 before new home construction can start.

The city wants to bid the project soon, and construction could start by April.

“Ultimately, through subsequent phases, it will serve the east side of the Highway 64 corridor. That’s the ultimate goal,” Harrell said. “We’ll also be taking two pump stations offline, and that’s always a win because those are pretty high-maintenance responsibilities.”

There is no timeline yet for Phases 2 or 3.

Because of the location of the new line, pumps will not be needed and the sewage will flow via gravity. Currently, most developments between Seed Tick Road and Chambers Chapel flow through those two pumps.

On the west side of Lakeland, designs for the suburb’s other interceptor project at Oliver Creek are complete, and the city is beginning to acquire easements.

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“The initial push for that project was because Memphis was having capacity issues and had its consent decree with the Fletcher Creek interceptor,” Harrell said.

Most of the Stonebridge area currently flows to Memphis for treatment. Lakeland was given the option of putting in storage tanks to capture the wastewater and release it to the Memphis system in off-peak hours overnight.

“But we saw an opportunity to just transfer the flow to our plant,” said Harrell, who pointed out that some of the area affected is also in Bartlett in the Davies Plantation area. “It’s about 1,000-ish users per city (Lakeland and Bartlett) that we will be transferring flow back to our plant.”

Harrell added that the plant will help properties south of U.S. 70, where some tracts don’t have public sewer. The Lakeland facility will allow sewer connections when those properties “get ready to develop,” Harrell said.

The project should seek bids in 2024.

“We anticipate being off the Memphis system by 2026,” Harrell said. “We’re really building it for our future capacity primarily.”

Bartlett

Because of sewer capacity issues, Memphis has been unable to allow any new connections to its system in the Fletcher Creek basin area — spanning a 38-mile stretch roughly from Sycamore View Road to Stage Road/U.S. 64 to Walnut Grove and Macon Road — unless new projects install an offline wastewater storage tank where the wastewater can be pumped overnight in off-peak hours.

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In Bartlett, two wastewater storage tanks will be installed by the spring or early summer at the $162 million Union Depot mixed-use project. The 74-acre site formerly was the Tennessee Baptist Children’s Home property on U.S. 70 near Stage Road.

The suburb has monitored the flow through that area since the middle of last year and hopes to complete the study by the end of this month. The information will determine if there is enough capacity with the Union Depot work to handle other development.

“That data is going to shed a lot of light on capacities,” Parsons said.

Bartlett has an evergreen-type contract with the City of Memphis dating to the 1970s. Under the agreement, the larger city provides sewer service at its treatment plants for about two-thirds of Bartlett. In the early 2000s, the agreement was modified so the formula for Bartlett’s cost to send its wastewater to Memphis could be adjusted every two years.

The two sides have negotiated in recent years to address the need for more capacity.

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The largest proposed storage tank in Bartlett is a 6.3-million-gallon tank to serve the area near Bartlett’s industrial park on Christoval Street near U.S. 64 eastward to the city limits on the south and east. Design work has not started on that tank.

“We’re setting up meetings with people in the industrial development park to see what their future needs would be if we had tank or sewer infrastructure available,” said Parsons, who was elected Bartlett mayor in November.

He anticipates sitting down soon with Memphis officials and talking through what sewer infrastructure looks like for both municipalities.

“I just want to be confident that these storage tanks are the long-term solution for the Memphis sewers because they are expensive to build,” Parsons said.

Another much more expensive long-term solution for Bartlett would be a new wastewater treatment plant at a cost of approximately $100 million to $150 million.

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“I think that’s too big of a pill to bite right now. At this juncture, we can’t afford that,” said Parsons, He noted that to even start that discussion, the city would have to go through the EPA and Tennessee Department of Environmental and Conservation to determine the potential impact on the Loosahatchie River.

Horn Lake

In late-2017, Strickland announced Memphis would allow no new connections to its sewer system from Shelby County developments outside Memphis. Strickland gave similar notice six months later to the Horn Lake Creek Basin Sewer District in North Mississippi. That agreement expires this year, and there is a lawsuit making its way through the court system.

“Looking at our lack of capacity and the fact that we were serving Mississippi citizens, we decided to give them five years notice that we were no longer going to do that because Memphis is growing,” Strickland said. “Our population for the first time in 50 or 60 years is actually growing. Industry is coming here, and we have limited capacity. So we wanted to focus on growing Memphis and Shelby County.”