Willing to wait

Havelock and New Bern officials seem to agree — a proposed sewer agreement between the neighboring cities is too important to rush.

The proposal, in the works for two years, appears to have hit another snag, with New Bern leaders saying last week that it may be months before they make any decisions on the proposal.

"I’m certain that when they have an opportunity, they will give it due diligence," Havelock Mayor Jimmy Sanders said. "We’re not trying to pressure them."

New Bern is under new leadership, with elections bringing a new mayor and new board members.

On top of that, the city’s manager, Bill Hartman, retired, and the city’s engineer, David Muse, died of a heart attack.

"You have to understand that there are several things that happened," Havelock Commissioner Danny Walsh. "They lost a lot of their expertise.

"It’s going to take them some time. There’s no way they could have come on board (with the agreement) without a city manager and a city engineer in place."

The agreement would allow Havelock to tap into New Bern’s sewer system. Havelock is nearly at capacity with its system and needs more allocation to allow for city growth.

Under the proposal, Havelock would get 274,000 gallons per day of sewerage. Havelock would pay for a minimum of 150,000 gallons whether it uses it or not. Havelock would also pay New Bern $1.35 million to be collected beginning in the sixth year of the deal. Havelock would also finance the construction of the connecting pipe and turn it over to New Bern.

Sanders said he understood the reasons behind the delays, but still wishes for more progress with the new New Bern board.

"They are not going at the pace that I’d like them to go but the old board didn’t either," he said. "It’s not my place to second-guess them on their timetable, even though their timetable is not what I’d want it to be."

Walsh said the agreement would benefit both cities in that a larger, connected system could make the cities more likely to receive federal or state money to maintain and repair the system.

It would also set Catfish Lake Road as a boundary between the cities, creating the possibility of a metropolitan area in which the populations of New Bern and Havelock could be combined.

"As soon as you touch you become a regional marketing area," Walsh said. "When a restaurant or somebody else looks at us, they look at us as a region. When the federal government wants to spend some money on a sewer project, it looks at us as a region. Everybody looks at us more favorably."

Sanders and Walsh said Havelock is not relying on the agreement as the basis of the city’s sewer problems. They said the city continues to make progress on a three-phase, $24 million improvement plan that includes relocation of the city’s discharge pipe from Slocum Creek to the Neuse River, and expansion and renovation of the city sewer plant.

"We look at New Bern as an extra benefit," Sanders said. "Is it nice to have? Yes. Is it an essential ingredient? No."

"If it works fine; if it doesn’t fine," Walsh added. "We have other alternatives."