CORRECTION 9:56 p.m., Thursday, July 2: Mayor Chris Stacy said water rates are the same inside and outside the city limits; clarifies current water, sewer rates; corrects Coastal Georgia Regional Water Planning Council.
Managing water and wastewater is a challenge for the growing City of Riceboro, and it’s an example of what’s facing Liberty County’s cities and other entities. County planners are in the early stages of assessing whether to consolidate some or all of those required systems for the sake of growth.
Riceboro ran afoul of state and federal regulations over serial violations at its outdated sewer treatment system. A series of proposed developments near I-95 never materialized or stalled in court battles and environmental violations some two decades later. The grossly underfunded volunteer fire department is barely hanging on. And the city remains financially dependent on SNF – a chemical plant that makes chemicals to improve pulp paper processing, as well as to clump together suspended particles in wastewater – as its last remaining large industrial customer after International Paper closed.
Right now, the city depends on McIntosh County for most of its drinking water. That’s because McIntosh’s well is in a “green zone” and is able to pump exponentially more water under state regulations. Riceboro’s two wells, at Barrington Ferry near Briar Bay Park and on Coastal Highway behind the fire house, are in the “yellow zone” and cannot pump nearly as much water.
In 2016, the city took out a $1 million loan from the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority to finance the McIntosh well project, plus another $1.25 million from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration “to support the expansion plans of a major manufacturer of water-soluble polymers. According to grantee estimates, the investment is expected to retain 500 jobs, create 100 new jobs, and generate $8 million in private investment.”
Since 2024, the City of Riceboro has been under an enforcement order from Georgia Environmental Protection Division for multiple violations at its wastewater treatment plant. Riceboro uses treatment ponds, storage ponds, and sprayfields to process its wastewater, which discharges to Riceboro Creek.
In 2025, EPD cited the plant for failing to maintain its equipment, giving the city until June 1, 2026 “to upgrade the headworks and the aeration system.” EPD has extended the facility’s compliance deadline twice in two years, and Ogeechee Riverkeeper has urged weekly monitoring of oxygen levels and total suspended solids in the plant’s discharge.
City engineer P.C. Simonton’s project report details a two-part solution to Riceboro’s water and wastewater problems. The city would extend water and sewer services to SNF’s expansion “on the west side of Riceboro Creek.” It also would fix and upgrade the existing wastewater treatment plant and five pump stations and add electronic monitoring controls to 21 others.
Riceboro proposed pump station upgrades
Mouse over dots for station names. Map by Maggie Lee.
Water and land
Riceboro recently asked the Georgia Assembly to redraw its boundaries to include a long stretch down Coastal Highway that widens to encircle the wetlands next to the South Newport River public boat ramp. But it doesn’t include an area where people have clamored for years to be incorporated into the city. Residents allege their request is being ignored for political reasons because it would add enough voters to the city to unseat the current administration. Stacy has not said what commercial project is planned for the new area, but new homes are already being built.
Soon after the May 12 annexation, Councilman Tim Akra’s family, which owned heirs’ property along the new boundary, got a zoning change approved for Riceboro’s first residential subdivision in years. (Akra recused himself from the vote.) Now, Riceboro native and former Hinesville city manager Kenneth Howard is seeking approval for about 40 detached townhomes alongside the Historic Baptismal Trail. Other residential projects are in the pipeline. All those people will add to the demand for water and wastewater service.
While some residents begrudgingly acknowledge that “growth” is coming one way or another, they also worry that a culture of subsistence farming, hunting, and fishing – a way of life many continue even when they hold full-time jobs – may disappear. They also ask for whom these homes are being built, starting in the mid-200s at prices few locals can hope to afford when the median household income is $35,000.
The price of compliance
During the June 22 State of the City meeting, citizens repeatedly asked Mayor Chris Stacy to justify the $6 million price tag to upgrade the wastewater treatment plant and failing pump stations.
The city is seeking a loan from the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority to cover repairs and upgrades. That amount is three times Riceboro’s annual budget.
The application is due in August but the city won’t know if it gets funded until February 2027.
“It’s a process on the GEFA loan,” Stacy explained. “It’s a process and then there’s an evaluation period… so you don’t just give ‘em numbers and they write you a check tomorrow. It’s an evaluation period. It goes to Atlanta and Atlanta evaluates it, they might come back, say ‘you can’t do this, you can’t do that.’
Average rates attached to the engineering report calculated current water and sewer bills at $87.99 for city residents and $115.49 for customers outside the city limits, including those who have no representation on the city council. That includes a $5.16 debt service charge and $2.84 base rate inside the city, and a $5.16 debt service charge and $4.26 base rate outside the city for drinking water. Wastewater is listed as $9.15 base charge and $25.85 debt service charge in the city, and a $13.73 base charge plus $25.85 debt service charge outside the city limits.
Late Thursday, Stacy told The Current GA rates are the same for all customers, regardless of where they live.
What’s more, he said, for customers who use 0 to 2,000 gallons, the rate for water is $7: “You can’t get water much cheaper than that,” Stacy wrote Thursday evening, adding sewer is $28 for that tier. “If you check your data throughout the state of Georgia, there is no city [that has] water and sewer and their residents only [pay] $35 a month.” That amount does not include trash service, he pointed out.
Stacy told attendees the wastewater treatment upgrade project’s estimated budget was available at City Hall and later supplied a copy to The Current GA on request:
Who gets to choose?
Separate from the city’s wastewater treatment plant is a new planning puzzle: whether excess treated wastewater from the Liberty County Development Authority’s proposed treatment plant will be rerouted to the North Newport River instead of the Laurel View River.
Stacy spoke extensively with The Current GA about the city’s water and sewer challenges Tuesday. He noted that many people do not understand how the proposed Laurel View wastewater treatment plant will work, nor that it is the cleanest option available for processing wastewater. He also questioned why the Liberty County Development Authority has never included mayors of industrial cities like Riceboro and Midway, yet has voted repeatedly since the 1970s to send polluting industries to those communities. The board’s state charter, written in 1958, includes the county chair, the mayor of the largest city – Hinesville – and 5 appointees, 4 for the county and 1 for Hinesville.
“Hinesville never had industrial,” Stacy said. “Even in [the LCDA’s] infant stage, Riceboro should have had a seat at the table.”
Whether any amount of treated wastewater discharge from the proposed plant will help or harm either estuary is still up for debate. But the assumption that Riceboro residents would have no say in that debate irks Stacy and other residents, who have borne the brunt of decades of industrial pollution.
The Coastal Georgia Regional Water Planning Council will meet in September to discuss water allocations, Stacy said, “but nobody wants to talk about sewer.”
Piecing together the patchwork
Meanwhile, Liberty County is trying to get a handle on the disparate water and sewer jurisdictions that include the county, its cities, the LCDA, and private owners.
The patchwork of city and county sprayfields, wells, and related infrastructure prompted the Liberty Consolidated Planning Commission to issue a request for quotes (RFQ) in April on a strategic plan to get everyone on the same page – similar to the county’s Unified Development Ordinance or UDO that governs all planning and zoning countywide. When no company submitted a response in May, the deadline was extended to mid-June. Two companies have submitted bids, now awaiting technical review, according to the LCPC’s Mardee Sanchez.
Riceboro is just one example of how small cities are struggling to keep up with water and sewer systems that are often a municipality’s biggest moneymaker:
- Hinesville and Fort Stewart have shared a wastewater treatment plant since 1984, and Hinesville has maintained Fort Stewart’s drinking water towers since 2021. Hinesville has four wells and shares a fifth in Long County. Hinesville also sells sewer capacity to smaller cities like Flemington and Walthourville and is building a new treatment plant to double its wastewater capacity by 2028.
- In December 2024, while the City of Walthourville was trying to work its way out of years of fiscal mismanagement by previous administrations, a lift station malfunctioned and sewage backed up, forcing the city to move $300,000 from its TSPLOST fund to cover back invoices before the contractor would agree to fix the problem. The city buys sewer capacity from Hinesville and has several new subdivisions under construction.
- Walthourville also must upgrade or replace its two aging drinking water towers, which a consultant said were outdated and hazardous. On March 10, the council voted unanimously to hire the consultant.
- Midway has an 81-acre sprayfield that treats 500,000 gallons per day of wastewater. Many homes in and around Midway are on septic tanks. But local soils, especially closer to the marshes on the other side of I-95, limit where septic can be used. Midway treats Tradeport West’s wastewater, sharing 200,000 gallons per day of capacity with the LCDA. That’s not enough for continued growth, according to the authority. And Midway wants its own growth, too – financed by GEFA loans that also mean rate hikes.
- The Laurel View development between I-95 and Tradeport East will be the equivalent of a new city, according to LCPC Executive Director Jeff Ricketson. That project’s existence depends on the Liberty County Development Authority’s ability to finance, build, and manage a proposed membrane bioreactor (MBR) wastewater treatment plant. The plant would come online in phases, starting at 1 million gallons per day, eventually meeting a state-approved processing limit of up to 3 million gallons per day. The original plan was to reuse most of that recycled water for cooling and landscape irrigation and possibly fire suppression, piping any leftover treated wastewater into the Laurel View River. But vocal and organized opposition from residents along the Laurel View and other rivers in the estuary prompted LCDA to consider piping that water to the North Newport River and its estuaries along Riceboro.
- After International Paper shut down in Riceboro in October 2025, the Floridan drinking water aquifer quickly rebounded. Now companies and governments are thirsting after that allocation once it becomes available – and that anticipation could be one reason driving the rush to develop.
Stacy, who just returned from the Georgia Municipal Association meeting last weekend, said wastewater maintenance “was the biggest topic everyone is talking about… or plant[s] having problems throughout the state of Georgia. That’s nothing new. If you Google it, every system is the same.”
He added that he’s meeting with Georgia Rural Water Association and will “have your better [rate] analysis Tuesday.”
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