Town of Kingston Springs fights aging wastewater system amid active lawsuit

A preservation group is suing the Town of Kingston Springs for discharging high levels of pollutants into the Harpeth River. But city officials are taking action. 

The lawsuit by Tennessee Riverkeeper – filed in the U.S. District Court in October 2024 – alleges that the Town of Kingston Springs has done nothing to limit unacceptable levels of toxic sewage being dumped into the Harpeth River, including E. coli and chlorine.  

The town has a permit from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) that allows it to discharge treated wastewater into the Harpeth River. But under the Clean Water Act, there is a limit on how much pollutants those waters can carry. 

“The town's wastewater system was established and installed in [1989] so it's an aging system,” City Manager John Lawless told the Gazette. “It has issues, and those issues tend to get worse and worse over time if they're not taken care of. In this particular case, like any other aging infrastructure, the issues present themselves in the back end of what causes us to have violations with TDEC.”

Despite the lawsuit's allegations that the town is blatantly ignoring the problem, city officials are taking action – and, according to Lawless, have been for more than a year.

“The biggest issue that's probably on people's minds is E. coli. Because everybody's like, ‘Oh my gosh, there's E coli – we're dumping waste into the Harpeth River’ – which cannot be farther from the truth,” Lawless said. “The issue with E. coli is testing.” 

To provide me with a simplified version of the problem during our interview, Lawless said, strictly as an example, that the town is allowed to discharge less than 100 parts per million of E. coli into the Harpeth River on a weekly basis. 

“Just as a monthly example, our levels would come in at 57; 23; 4,352; 26. So, that puts us out of the parameters for the weekly [limit], and that really blows us out of the water for the monthly as well,” Lawless said. “Even though that's a violation, when you look at the reasoning and the cause behind it, it's not like, ‘Everything's fine, everything's fine, oh my gosh, this week there's E. coli everywhere and it's going into the Harpeth River, oh, and everything now is fine again.’ So you try to look and figure out, alright, what's going on?” 

Lawless said the town began working with the Tennessee Association of Utility Districts (TAUD) two years ago to learn best practices for testing and operating the sewage facility.

Until six months ago, Kingston Springs was sending its weekly E. coli samples out to a lab. However, E. coli is very sensitive, Lawless explained.

“If anything touches the rim [of the tube holding the E. coli sample] or anything close to the rim of that canister, it blows that [test result] out of the water,” Lawless said. “If that canister is open too long, just the ambient measurement of E. coli in the air [can affect the result].”

To avoid false results, TAUD suggested the town acquire the equipment to test their own E. coli samples. “The test results that we've done in house over the past six months have been fine – well within the parameters,” Lawless said.

As noted in a report released last August, Lawless said the town’s biggest causation of the violations with TDEC is the aging sewer lines that develop cracks and breaks, which result in inflow and infiltration (I&I).  

“That's something that we were diligently trying to fix over the last two years,” he said. “It's one of those things that it's like, ‘How do you eat an elephant?’ Because it's a huge problem. And it could come from thousands of different places. It could be little bits of everything everywhere, or it could be big issues in certain places.”

The town worked with Austin Peay State University to locate and verify all of its sewer lines and create digital maps. 

“That's been a huge help, because you’ve got to know where everything is,” Lawless said. “It could be a big problem all over the place, or it could be small problems all over the place, or a big problem in one place.”

The town also installed Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems on all wastewater pump stations to analyze data that will better determine problem areas and allow the town to isolate sections in most need of repair. 

“They benefited us because we saw that there was an anomaly downtown,” Lawless said. “We then took the initiative and got a company to come in and scope the line that actually was in front of City Hall and runs all the way down to the [sewer] plant. We found that it was very, very dirty.” 

“We had them come in and basically they cleaned the line … They then sent a camera down and recorded the line from City Hall down to the end of the plant. And we found out that the line itself was not that bad,” Lawless explained. “We found that the [seals around the] manholes, where the pipes come in and out, were poor at best. And we also saw that the manholes didn't have cracks, but definitely had seepage areas. So from that, we extrapolated that maybe the lines are not the biggest issue. Maybe if we focused on the manholes, because we’ve only got 110 of those, and got all of those squared away, that would fix a big chunk of our I&I issues.” 

“We hired a company to come in, and they did investigative tests on all of the manholes. They did a red, yellow, green analysis on each one of them,” he continued. “The red ones are really poor – they really need help; the yellow ones are next in line; and the green ones are okay. Unfortunately, there's a lot of red ones, a few green ones. We'll work to then start repairing those manhole chambers, and then see how much [of our I&I issues are] resolved after that.”

The town is also in the process of creating a Wastewater Board. Lawless explained that, currently, the Board of Commissioners serves as the Wastewater Board. However, the five commissioners on the board lack the “intricate knowledge” needed to oversee the sewage problems the town is having, Lawless said, so they’re in the process of looking for experts to fill out this board. This new body would advise the Board of Commissioners on next steps for maintaining the aging sewer system.

The town was recently accepting proposals for the acquisition and management of its Wastewater Department that provides sewer service to its 750 customers. The submission period closed on April 11. 

“The sewer system is an enterprise fund, which is very different than what's called the general fund,” Lawless explained. “The sewer system itself is only supported by the users of that system, whereas the general fund is supported by everybody. So the general fund is tax dollars, sales taxes, any fees, permits … that pays for parks and streets and fire and police and all the stuff that makes the town run.” 

He continued, “The sewer system, though, is completely 100% separate and is only funded by the users of that system. And there's only 750 plus users of that system … It's a 30 year old system with a lot of issues and a lot of problems. It's going to cost a lot of money to fix. Those 750 plus or minus customers are the only people that are the ones to pay for it.” 

Kingston Springs Mayor Todd Verhoven said that customers on the sewer system have already seen a “substantial” increase in their bill over the past few years. “Unfortunately, I don't see that changing until we find a permanent solution,” he said.

“Rates have gone up,” Lawless added, “They will probably continue to go up.”  

“We're working really hard and working through our budget workshops to make sure that we're putting the time, money and care that the sewer system is going to take to be up to standard,” Verhoven emphasized. “It's a very robust system for the number of users on that system. There's not a lot of users in Kingston Springs on our sewer system, but there's a lot of money that needs to be put into the system. Right now a lot of issues we're working through internally are next steps. What does it look like for the town to make sure that we're doing the best for the residents moving forward?”

Lawless concluded the conversation by stressing that the Town of Kingston Springs has a positive, working relationship with TDEC in regards to its aging sewer system.

“We want to work with TDEC because we know the system has issues, and we want to make sure that those issues are fixed,” he said. “It's not something that we've just been flippant about … It's something that we've been actively working on for years … It's just that there are so many [issues] and they are so big that it's just going to take time to get it done.”