UNION COUNTY, N.C. — Union County officials are being forced to hire a private company to oversee operations at the county's five wastewater treatment plants after an audit by state investigators discovered major problems.
Tuesday, officials with the county Department of Public Works announced they will accept bid proposals from private companies to take over the day-to-day maintenance and testing at the plants.
"Our obligation is to provide a reliable, efficient operation, and we need to meet the regulatory requirements day in and day out," said Director Ed Goscicki.
Instead, officials said state inspectors with the North Carolina Department of Natural Resources discovered problems with the record-keeping and protocols at the plants and issued a decertification notice, demanding workers stop testing the wastewater.
But officials said testing continued, despite the state's order, under the leadership of Superintendent John Hahn and the county operations manager.
Further investigation by NCDENR inspectors revealed even more problems, including failure to properly maintain equipment, Goscicki said, but he denied any knowledge of the issues or DENR's decertification notice.
"I was not getting credible information from them," Goscicki said, referring to Hahn and plant managers.
Earlier this year, after the issues came to light, Hahn suddenly retired and Goscicki said he fired the operations manager.
He said county officials realized they had to hire a private company to fix the problems.
The move will affect more than a dozen county workers at the wastewater treatment plants, but Goscicki promised they would keep their jobs.
"We are telling the contractors that they will be required to hire all of our 12 employees in comparable positions at comparable salaries," Goscicki said.
However, officials admitted the workers would then be at the will of the contractor, including losing access to county benefits and the ability to invest in their state pension plans.
"Probably the biggest negative for those employees would be the retirement benefit," Goscicki said.
County residents told Channel 9 they sympathized with the affected workers and wondered how the problems went undetected for so long, despite the state investigation.
"It's a bad situation ... they should have been upfront with the situation," said resident Cathy Peters.
County officials hope to award the contract, which could be valued at up to $3 million, by December.