Aiken County’s sewer processing capacity is a very finite resource, and the number one limitation on growth in the County, and thus, the City of Aiken. The County operates the Horse Creek Wastewater Plant and sells a portion of its processing capacity to the City of Aiken and several other utilities, including the City of North Augusta and Valley Public Service Authority.

Until now, the City of Aiken Planning Department, Planning Commission, City Manager, and Aiken City Council has treated it like an infinite resource, with Council ultimately granting every sewer service request from outside the City during this decade. Even following the news in the first half of 2024 that Aiken County had sold more than 95 percent of its permitted sewer capacity and the City itself was overallocated, the City of Aiken proceeded with business as usual, even granting sewer allocations to several more out-of-town developments constituting more than 1,200 homes—a total administrative commitment by the City amounting to more than 0.3 million gallons per day (MGD) of wastewater flow.

At its January 12, 2026 Work Session, Aiken City Council and the public were informed that the City’s future additional allocation from the County’s current wastewater plant expansion would be 40 percent lower — down to 1.5 million gallons per day (MGD) from the previously assumed 2.5 MGD. In addition, it was disclosed to Council that the City had only 0.41 MGD of remaining processing capacity from its current allocation with the County. At the same time, the City has at least 0.50 MGD of immediate claims against that remaining gallonage awaiting approval from the Aiken Public Service Authority, leaving a current 90,000 gallons per day deficit. That deficit is arguably significantly larger when considering all the sewer service approvals made by City Council over the past few years that are not accounted for in the 0.50 MGD schedule.

These other Council-approved projects, not yet counted for, are direct demands on the City’s share of the upcoming 1.5 MGD of expanded processing capacity. An analysis of the already Council-approved projects that will be serviced from the future 1.5 MGD is made far worse when new projects currently under review by the Planning Department are also taken into consideration. It appears that Aiken’s capacity to meet future needs is extremely limited.

Despite these disclosures, the City’s sewer policy is still operating on a first-come, first-served basis; not on an in-City project priority basis.

by Don Moniak
February 22, 2026

Since the late 2010’s, the City of Aiken has been aggressively expanding the extent of its sewer and water distribution system; and continues to grant further expansion despite limitations on capacity available from the Aiken County Public Service Authority (PSA).

This expansion has not been accompanied by an increase in sewer capacity. Aiken does not have its own wastewater treatment system, and is reliant upon the Aiken County Horse Creek Wastewater Plant (HCWP)—which is operated by the PSA— for its processing needs. As a customer of the PSA, the City must pay the fees recommended by the PSA and approved by Aiken County Council.

In early 2024, an audit of the plant’s then-permitted capacity of 20 million gallons per day found that the wastewater processing capacity already purchased was nearly at the permitted limit.

No clear public summary of the situation resulting from the audit has ever been issued, but a May 2024 memo (Figure 1) from County Administrator Brian Sanders to Aiken County Council provides the most salient details—the County had sold all but 30,000 gallons a day of its physical and permitted capacity of 20 million gallons a day (MGD). A 6.0 MGD expansion would allow the sale of additional capacity to provide something of a stopgap measure until the Horse Creek Wastewater Plant is further expanded. According to one engineering firm, that future total could be as high as 40 MGPD. (It is important to note that the plant is currently processing about 12 MGPD on average, of which more than half derives from the City of Aiken.)

The County also recognized that it was not recovering the actual costs of its processing, as it had not raised rates since 2012. In response, County Council approved a 62 percent increase, from $1.50 per thousand gallons to $2.41 per thousand gallons, for sewer treatment processing.

The bad news for the City of Aiken was contained in a subsequent email from County Administrator Brian Sanders to City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh, in which Sanders wrote that there had been a “major breakdown of communications between the County and DHEC during the permitting process.” According to the audit, the City of Aiken was permitted nearly 0.4 MGPD above its allocated amount since 2012. The good news was that an accounting adjustment added another 1.03 MGPD, leaving the City at that time with 0.64 MGPD of available capacity.

Several months later, following a closed-door Executive Session, County Council approved a massive fee increase for capacity connections (the one-time fee for new capacity purchases). The increase functions as a de facto impact fee, one achieved without any public hearings or public scrutiny.

The rate rose from $0.49 per gallon per day to $10.89 per gallon per day. For example, at an average of 300 gallons per day per home, the new fee increased costs for a 100-home development requiring sewer connections from ~$15,000 to ~$317,000.

Aiken’s Recent Sewer and Water District Growth

The City of Aiken has been expanding its utilities systems and services in two manners—-to grow the City and to grow its sewer and water business.

Expanding Sewer Services to Grow the City

Efforts to grow the City have largely involved annexing contiguous tracts for high-density developments. In addition, there have been a few in-city developments.

The most notable of these is the commitment to developers within the Powderhouse Connector project area, where the City essentially traded sewer connections for road rights-of-way. (See Development Road for more details.)

Aiken has also provided services to several other developments that required annexation, including a district of low-income and affordable apartment complexes in the Dougherty Road area, the May Royal Drive development, which involves more than 200 homes, and another 150-home subdivision along Highway 19.

Expanding Sewer Services to Grow the Business

More notably, Aiken has grown its sewer business by providing sewer and water services well outside the City limits. In doing so, it imposed its urban/suburban growth model upon County residents accustomed to life away from high-density developments, high-impact industries, and relatively high peak-hour traffic. The business growth model also imposed costs upon the County, most notably upon emergency response and volunteer fire resources. (1)

One of the most questionable expansions is eight miles north of the City limits in the area of Interstate 20’s Exit 18. As reported in Aiken Takes on Exit 18, the City has embarked on an expansion that would extend nearly two miles west of Verenes Business/Industrial Park, involving a $3.5 million sewer lift station, and potentially provide sewer services for more than a thousand acres of development—some of it adjacent to or within the City’s Brunswick Tract that was obtained to protect its Shaw Creek water supply; and all of it well beyond any future hopes for annexation.

The planned, but at this point only attempted, growth around Exit 18–six miles north of City limits—also involved a secretive effort known as Project Unicorn, widely acknowledged as an effort to lure the Buc-cee’s company to establish its presence in Aiken County. The status of that project is unknown, but it is still rumored to be in the offering.

The City also pursued, in conjunction with the County, the unpopular notion of providing up to 1.5 MGD of sewer capacity for the proposed House of Raeford chicken slaughterhouse and processing plant, and even voted 6-1 in favor of an Ordinance to provide utility services during its First (and only) Reading. Ultimately, the proposal was defeated when a critical mass of citizen objections meshed with the aforementioned sudden and surprising realization by the County that its sewer processing capacity was nearly fully allocated. (see Sewer Capacity Makes the News).

Similarly, there have also been smaller efforts at sewer-line extensions that could lead to larger developments upwards of ten miles north of City limits. The most notable example is the 7-11 gas station at Exit 22, where the City spent more than a million dollars to extend sewer and water lines across the Interstate, where the 7-11 is, at this point, the only beneficiary of that largesse. (see The Public Costs of a 7-11 Store).

All of the above-mentioned developments occurred prior to mid 2024, and before the surprising findings of the capacity audit.

However, since that time the City’s Planning Commission has recommended, and City Council has approved, sewer services for three new subdivisions: Creighton Meadows (August 2024, 250 homes six miles north of City limits next to the Shaw Plant on Frontage Road) Bridge Creek (January 2025, 725 homes one mile north of City limits along Hwy 19), and Bedford Place (January 2025, 93 homes, four miles north of City limits along Columbia Highway/Hwy 1 N). The issue of the City’s limited remaining sewer capacity never entered the approval equation for these proposed subdivisions, where annexation is generally a distant dream.

This largesse has now contributed to an even greater pinch in sewer allocations for new developments.

The 2026 Reality Check

The present reality was addressed at the January 12, 2026 Aiken City Council Work Session, where City Engineer Thomas Parrot outlined the City’s sewer capacity problems. The highlights of his slide presentation, which can be viewed in the agenda packet and heard in this audio, include the following highlights:

1. The City was notified in early 2024 (around the time of the Chicken Plant controversy) that its “remaining allocation (at the plant) was fully committed.”

2. The City only has 0.41 million gallons per day (MGD) of remaining existing capacity, but there are an immediate “~0.5 million gallons per day” of development needs with capacity approval by the PSA currently pending. That leaves a present deficit of 90,000 GPD. The City is negotiating with the County to obtain a potential credit of 0.1 MGD from previously approved projects that are now stalled or abandoned, which would leave it with a slight surplus.

3. The County has only agreed to sell the City 1.5 MGD of new capacity after its 6.0 MGD Sewer Plant expansion is completed next year. This is 1.0 MGD less than the 2.5 MGD City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh told City Council in June 2025 (Pages 456 to 474) was necessary to meet current and future demands.

4. The City implemented a policy in July 2025 to make developers pay the upfront cost of the $10.89 per gallon connection fee (although there is no record of City Council approving such a policy (2)

5. Council was told that sewer service approvals are operated on a “first come first served basis.”

6. Staff recommended that Council pass an Ordinance requiring that a Sewer Impact Fee be assessed for all projects outside of the city that are not yet approved for sewer. (3)

However, data obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request shows that while there is an immediate approved project’s need for 0.5 MGDP, the capacity promised by the City Council easily exceeds that figure.

In a document titled CMO Project Spreadsheet, the list of projects ranging from the preconceptual to working review stage that require PSA sewer capacity approval is nearly 0.65 MGPD, more than the 0.5 MGPD reported during the Work Session.

According to City Engineer Thomas Parrott, the 0.5 MGPD is a “planning estimate,” while the 0.65 MGPD “reflects a snapshot of the spreadsheet” that may include “preliminary numbers that are intentionally conservative,” projects at different stages of definition concept,” values that may be updated as plans change, or are on the list but “are not yet at a point where a formal capacity request would be made.”

In addition, no allocation figure is identified for the proposed 705-home Bridge Creek subdivision, for which City Council approved sewer and water in January 2025; and only Phase I of Creighton Meadows (147 homes out of 247 approved in August 2024) is listed in the spreadsheet. In total, ~850 homes are left out of the equation. This commitment by Council could eventually add up to as much as 0.25 MGPD of the 1.5 MGPD in additional capacity.

According to Mr. Parrott, no capacity is listed for Bridge Creek because the City “has not received a formal, usable submittal or a defined phase with enough information to quantify flow.” However, the Sewer and Water Services Agreement has been recorded with the County’s Register of Deeds; and a $40 million lawsuit filed this week against the City argues that such a recording constitutes a long-lived approval by the City and not one that expires (4).

The worksheet also contains a list of commercial projects, but has no sewer data associated with those businesses.

Completely missing from the project list are smaller developments like planned public school expansions and downtown developments.

All this begs the immediate question: why were the Planning Department and Planning Commission allowed to keep accepting and processing applications that required new sewer connections and allocations well outside of city limits? A second question is why City staff, not City Council, is setting policy, particularly the unwritten “first-come, first-served” policy? And a third question on many minds is why there is zero discussion at the Council level of a temporary moratorium on new sewer service for developments well outside of the City limits, at least until City Council can define some priorities that set the standard for which developments receive the benefit of this very finite resource?

Footnotes:

(1) During a Planning Commission workshop last fall, County Development Director Joel Duke described the adverse impacts on the County from the sprawl enabled by the sewer and water expansion policy. These include strains on law enforcement, emergency response, and volunteer fire departments. The Center Fire Department has borne the brunt of this expansion in terms of emergency fire and accident response, and the City of Aiken has made no effort to pay its share of the increased costs.

(2) There was no such item on City Council’s agenda at its only July 2025 meeting.

Section 44-5(b) of the Municipal Code requires developers to pay a $400 per housing unit sewer facilities charge, which works out to only ~$1.25/gallon. There are no apparent plans to repeal this fee.

The new $ 10.89-per-gallon charge mandated by the County and now in effect is not yet part of the City Code.

It is unclear whether the City was authorized by Council to pass the costs of the de facto impact fee along to developers.

(3) The First Reading of the Public Hearing for a Sewer Capacity Impact Fee Ordinance will be held Monday, February 23, 2026 during Aiken City Council’s Regular Meeting. Information and comment opportunities for the Ordinance can be found on a dedicated City web page.

(4) This past week Crowell and Company filed a $40 million breach of trust lawsuit against the City of Aiken. At issue is whether a sewer service approval for a 60-acre parcel along Toolebeck Road, granted by City Council in 2020, is still valid. A key element of the lawsuit is the assertion that the recording of the sewer services agreement, which was signed by City officials, confers a long-term right to that service, one that does not expire as long as other conditions are met.