‘Massive project’: A large water tower is coming to Bluffton. What we know
A large water tower is in the works for Bluffton.
Former town manager Marc Orlando first mentioned the proposed water tower this week at the town’s strategic workshop, surprising the group of elected officials at the meeting. He called it “a massive project in our town.”
“This is the first I’ve heard about it,” Council member Larry Toomer responded. Others, including Mayor Lisa Sulka, agreed.
A Beaufort-Jasper Water & Sewer Authority project, the water tower will likely service two ongoing water main projects in the Bluffton area. The water mains — being installed along S.C. 46 from the entrance of Heritage at New Riverside to Gibbet Road and from the intersection at Gibbet Road and S.C. 170 to H.E. McCracken Circle — are intended to provide safe drinking water to a part of Bluffton bustling with growth along the busy highway.
Toomer previously told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette that although he doesn’t think the water quality in the area is poor, BJWSA is building the water lines to prepare for an influx of development in the New Riverside area.
“According to [BJWSA’s] statistics and their engineering, [water quality and pressure] is rapidly going to become an issue when some of the other new developments come online,” he said. “They were concerned they won’t have enough volume to meet the needs of the new developments and to better serve the ones that are already online.”
Though the town and BJWSA have released little information about the water tower project, it’s expected to be “in the vicinity of Buckwalter Parkway,” BJWSA’s director of engineering, Rebecca Bowyer, wrote in an email Monday. BJWSA has contracted with Georgia-based construction company Ruby-Collins Inc. for the project.
The composite water tank will be designed to hold 1.5 million gallons of water, Bowyer said.
During a discussion about the size of the tank on Monday, Council member Dan Wood said, “This is going to be way over the tree line, so good luck.”
Bowyer agreed that the tank would be tall.
“It will be above the tree line,” she said. “You will be able to see it.”
She said the tanks are typically painted an off-white color.
Asked about the plans Wednesday, Orlando said the town has “nothing at this point.”
BJWSA is “working on a design-build project now and, conceptually, we don’t know what that looks like at all in terms of height,” he said. “It is a bigger water tower than what we traditionally see in this area currently.”
In an email to a reporter Tuesday, Bowyer said the contractor’s design-build team had not selected a style for the tank and did not have any conceptual drawings.
Once BJWSA receives recommendations for the tank style and location, the team will meet with Bluffton officials about how to proceed with rezoning and development, she said. She said she expects construction to start in the fall.
Near the end of Monday’s discussion, interim town manager Scott Marshall added that the tower would be a “great spot” for the town’s “Bluffton: Heart of the Lowcountry” logo.
“Well, every small town has a water tower,” Mayor Sulka responded. “We just don’t.”
This story was originally published January 28, 2021 at 4:25 AM.
