Fairhope expanding sewer services toward 181, 104 area

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FAIRHOPE – Sewer service improvements will soon begin to help Fairhope meet the needs of developing areas near Alabama 181 and 104, city officials said.

The Fairhope City Council approved hiring Thompson Engineering to develop the plans to add a sewer force main and lift station. The new main will extend from Bishop Road to a new lift station. The station will be built at the site of the Publix supermarket under construction at the intersection of Alabama 181 and Alabama 104, Jason Langley, Fairhope water and sewer director, said.

The council voted Nov. 22 to hire Thompson at a cost of $269,000.

At the meeting, Mayor Sherry Sullivan said that while the new lift station will be placed at the Publix site, the system is intended to serve all of the developing area along the two highways in eastern Fairhope.

“It doesn’t just serve Publix,” Sullivan said. “There are four or five other areas that will filter through that.”

“That force main will serve all that development out at 181 and 104 area,” the mayor added.

Langley said the system will include a total of seven lift stations to serve the area.

“This will be what we call a regional station that Publix is actually putting in,” Langley said. “We’re just upsizing it and then that one station will pick up everything in the north end and then pump to the lift station there at Bishop, that we’re calling Fairhope East, and then that station picks it up and pumps it directly to the wastewater plant. Currently, it’s not doing that. It’s going through other stations.”

The lift station will send sewage from the area to a line on Alabama 181. The material will flow south to Alabama 104, then west along Baldwin County 13, then south to Fairhope Avenue, and then west to connect to the city system at Bishop Road, according to city reports.

The project will be constructed in two phases to allow work to start as soon as possible, the report said. The first phase will include the design and construction of the lift station. The sewer main will be built in the second phase.