Current and former Brooklet city officials, Statesboro and Bulloch County officials, and state lawmakers who backed the project broke ground Thursday for Phase I of Brooklet’s first real city sewer system.

In this first phase, with construction costs of almost $6 million, contractors will install a pumping station and about six miles of 12 -inch diameter sewer main along Brooklet and Bulloch County street and road right of ways to link to a Statesboro main. This will allow Brooklet to share in the capacity of Statesboro’s existing wastewater treatment plant under the terms of an intergovernmental agreement originally approved by both city councils in July 2023.

“A lot of you know that our town has struggled for many years because of not having an alternative to septic systems,” said Brooklet Mayor Nicky Gwinnett. “It is difficult to attract new restaurants and businesses to locate in downtown without a real sewer system. We are here today to break ground on a solution to this long-term problem and start the process of reviving downtown Brooklet.”

Besides allowing for new businesses downtown, “this historic project will give much-needed sewer relief to the existing businesses” and “open new doors for commercial activity on the (U.S.) Highway 80 commercial corridor,” he said.

“Finally, this project will allow the city of Brooklet to provide sewer and water services to the new Southeast Bulloch High School, which will be the largest school in the county at full buildout,” Gwinnett said.

Brooklet already provides water, but not sewer service. to the existing Brooklet Elementary, Southeast Bulloch Middle and Southeast Bulloch High schools. But at this point, Brooklet city and Bulloch County Board of Education officials have not reached an agreement to connect the three existing schools or the planned new one to the new city sewer system.

Long in the planning

Calling the sewer installation, “the largest infrastructure project the city of Brooklet has ever undertaken,” Gwinnett said it “has been in the making for over 25 years.”

“It has finally become a reality due to the cooperation with the city of Statesboro, who will treat the wastewater, the Bulloch County commissioners, who will allow the pipeline to be installed on your right of way and our state leaders who assisted with financing,” he added.

Former Brooklet Mayor Joe Grooms III, who served through 2023, said the prayer of invocation for the ceremony, and Gwinnett said that Grooms had been instrumental in moving the project forward.

During Grooms’ term as mayor, and while former District 160 State Rep. Jan Tankersley, a Brooklet resident, was still in the state Legislature, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget in spring 2022 first earmarked a little over $2 million for Brooklet’s sewer development.

This was increased 10%, to more than $2.23 million, in Gov. Brian Kemp’s May 2023 announcement of community grant award supplements for COVID-19 impacted areas.

Tankersley had left office at the end of 2022 and was succeeded by current District 160 Rep. Lehman Franklin, who lives at Stilson but has a Statesboro-based business. In November 2024, Brooklet officials received notice from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget that its water and sewer project funding, through the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority, was being increased to $5,134,100.

With engineering and other non-construction expenses, the system as currently planned is projected to cost about $7.15 million.

So Brooklet City Council also authorized a $7.1 million bond issuance for long-term financing of the sewer system. City officials said the bond money is needed both to provide a required match for the original $2 million state grant and to begin connecting sewer collection lines (not included in Phase I) to businesses in the downtown area.

Tankersley’s view

Both Tankersley and Franklin, and also District 4 State Sen. Billy Hickman, of Statesboro, spoke during Thursday’s ceremony.

“I’m so thankful that Brooklet City Council and this mayor and the mayors preceding him have identified this as a real need…,” Tankersley said. “There are certain things that we need to do to improve the lives of our people that live here, and going from septic to sewage just needs to happen.”

She acknowledged that some inconvenience can accompany a major infrastructure project.

“It’s going to be difficult at times for people who live here and they have to go around construction, but I know … folks who live here, we’ll be patient and we’ll embrace this wonderful need in our community and consider it real progress,” Tankersley said.

Statesboro Mayor Jonathan McCollar and new Bulloch County Board of Commissioners Chairman David Bennett also spoke.

After noting that he has just arrived in office and had nothing to do with the project, Bennett said he is excited about it because it will improve quality of life for Brooklet residents and represents “smart growth.”

“We need smart growth in Bulloch County,” he said. “We can continue to grow and just build houses and stack things in here all over the county, or we can build the infrastructure to support those things and start doing that now.”

Doing that, Bennett said, requires a collaborative effort. McCollar said, in part, “This is what Bulloch County is all about, us working together… to make sure we all have a great place to call home.”

Two main contractors

Besides the public officials, builders and engineers took part in the ceremony.

Shockley Plumbing, based in Jenkins County, has been awarded an almost $4.85 million contract for the pipe work and requested a $117,700 change order, according to city documents.

“Our start date is January 20th, Monday-week,” Wes Lee, vice president and project superintendent for Shockley Plumbing. said Thursday. “We’ve got some material delivered, but our official start date is January 20, and we expect it to take six months.”

A different contractor, Y-Delta, which is based in Statesboro, has a $993,204 contract to install the lift station, which will include two large sewer pumps and a backup generator. Y-Delta’s vice president, Jody Rogers, said he can’t predict the completion date yet because he does not know when the pumps, currently “long-lead-time” items, will be delivered.

Gwinnett said Phase I in total should be done in about 12 months.

Y-Delta is also to set in place two manholes for the future downtown sewer collection system to tie to, Rogers said.

These will be located near the Scout Hut on the south end of Parker Avenue, from where the sewer main will run westward along Brooklet’s West Lane Street, across a wooded area and along the county right of way of S&S Railroad Bed Trail Road west to a Statesboro sewer main in the area of the Five Points intersection.

Phase I does not include any collection system connections to customers. Gwinnett said the priority will be to connect to downtown businesses, followed by the schools, with any expansion to residential areas to be planned later.