By the numbers
What: Tour of Village of Christiansburg Waste Water Treatment Plant
Where: 5526 Addison New Carlisle Rd.
When: 1-4 p.m. Sunday
Every home in the village of Christiansburg has now been connected to its new sewer system.
The completion of the connection process came Thursday, according to project manager Kent Shaner. Crews installed new 1,000-gallon septic tanks at all properties in the village.
The project started about a year and a half ago, and required tearing up yards. Many residents have seen their yards restored, but Shaner says he expects the job will take another month to be finished.
“They were not very timely on the restoration work,” said Charles Lyons, Christiansburg’s council president. He said Shinn Brothers, the construction company in charge of the project, led him to believe it would start restoration in the middle of May and did not.
Shaner said he would have liked to start the restoration earlier, but weather got in the way.
“Weather did not help it this year at all, considering we got rain every seven or eight days,” said Shaner. Crews would have had to re-do work after rain, he added.
Christiansburg resident Leslie Clevenger took the matter of restoring her yard into her own hands.
“My husband and I spent a couple of weeks, a month basically, putting it back together ourselves,” she said.
She said Shinn Brothers was helpful in the process, offering grass seed and other materials.
“In the summer months, this is an extension of our house, this is a room, and to have mud and holes, I went, ‘I can’t do that,’ ” Clevenger explained.
Some of her neighbors who didn’t take the initiative were left waiting.
“I know our neighbor next door, in the last three weeks they finally got over here. They did a great job, but all summer long she had a mud hole with weeds in it,” she added.
Starting in September, residents of the village began paying a monthly sewer bill of $60, up from a $30 interim rate.
“Most people knew it was coming and some people did not like it,” Lyons said.
But many residents knew the new system was a necessity, he added.
“It’s a good thing, it was over-needed,” Clevenger said.
The village was forced to update its sewer system after failing to meet Environmental Protection Agency guidelines in 2012.
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