By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Chiefland city officials met with the general manager of Central Florida Electric Cooperative on April 18 and were told the Co-op was interested in being voluntarily annexed but wants to connect to city sewer in return.
City Manager Laura Cain said she and Commissioner Rollin Hudson met with General Manager Denny George and he said the Co-op would consider being annexed if it could connect to city sewer a few blocks away.
The city is looking for additional property tax revenue from the annexation of the cooperative.
“They are very much into partnerships and we work together well and they’re very much interested but they’re also interested in getting hooked to city sewer,” Cain said.
The cooperative is located just outside the city limits off County Road 121. City sewer extends all the way to the intersection of NE 4th St. and U.S. 129 less than a half mile from the cooperative.
She said the city already provides services to the cooperative because of its close proximity to the city.
“If they need to call the sheriff’s office, we will be the first to respond with the Chiefland Police Department, so they’re already getting, kind of, some of our services without being in the city because we‘re the closest to respond,” she said.
Cain said the city and the cooperative have always worked well together and remain on good terms. Cain will reach out to the city’s consulting engineers, Mittauer & Associates, to find out what it would cost to engineer the project.
“That’s just going to take some time,” Cain said. “That’s what we discussed at Monday’s city commission meeting, figuring out the best way and what route to hook up CFEC to our city sewer.”
The most likely route to connect the Co-op to city sewer is the NE 4th St. main which empties into a sewer lift station next door to First Baptist Church. One of the engineering questions is whether the lift station would have to be upgraded to handle the extra waste.
She said the cooperative isn’t far away, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy to connect the cooperative to city sewer.
“It is probably harder than it looks – I’m not a sewer person – we are working with CFEC and our engineers will work with CFEC,” she said. “Is it going to cost thousands and thousands of dollars to engineer this project? What is the cost going to be? That’s our first step, to see what kind of dollars we’re talking about.”
Cain sent letters to CFEC and Duke Energy asking if they would be interested in being annexed. Duke Energy, owns a new solar energy electricity generating facility next door to the cooperative, didn’t respond.
“I have not heard or received anything from Duke,” she said.
Cain said she may reach out to Duke to find out if the answer is yes or no regarding annexation, but said she has a lot of irons in the fire right now and won’t be right away.
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Enterprise Reporting April 26, 2023; Posted April 26, 2023
