Darby Creek Advocate Volume 10, Issue 1  March 2002

County Commissioners Now Opposed to Land Application Sewage Treatment

Two of Franklin County’s three commissioners recently clarified their position on an issue that has great implications for the Big Darby watershed in western Franklin County.

Dewey Stokes and Mary Jo Kilroy said in a letter to the Ohio EPA that they oppose the use of so-called alternative sewage systems to service new developments in county jurisdictions.

Several recent proposals to build large-scale developments in the Darby watershed would have relied on sewage systems that were not tied to Columbus’s centralized treatment plants. One, known as Sugar Farms, would have sprayed treated sewage on land next to Clover-Groff, a tributary of Hellbranch Run and Big Darby Creek.

County officials initially appeared to favor these proposals. In fact, when the county developed guidelines for alternative projects many Darby supporters feared that a wave of urban development was about to sweep the Hellbranch Run area and beyond. Columbus officials interpreted the move as a “land grab,” especially when the county dropped out of the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission to create its own planning body.

County officials insisted that they were merely trying to proactively create regulations that could control such growth.

In their letter to the EPA, Stokes and Kilroy expressed support for the use of Columbus’s sewer system to supply any new development. In the short term, this would appear to limit large-scale growth in areas of the county that are not adjacent to the city.