The Laurens County Water and Sewer Commission, which sold $9 Million worth of water during the just completed fiscal year, is taking a look at the business practice of developing and implementing a Strategic Plan.
It’s different from a Capital Improvements Plan, in that the capital plan involves mostly equipment. A Strategic Plan is more attuned to the ideas of the workforce, technology, manpower including recruitment and retention, the vehicle’s fleet, new regulations, and growth. Included can be the way the utility will respond to natural elements it can face, such as extreme heat and cold, hurricanes and tornados, and earthquakes.
Jeff Field, the utility’s general manager, said at the LCWSC board’s last Tuesday morning meeting that money for a Strategic Plan is budgeted. The board heard a proposal from Dan Johnson and Graham Rich on facilitating and developing a Strategic Plan.
The first step would be interviews with the employees, part of a “bottom-up” approach rather than a “top-down” method of determine future paths. After that, LCWSC staff and board members would be interviewed and included in discussion sessions, then a document would be developed to guide LCWSC’s future.
Field indicated LCWSC is developing into a business whose size dictates the need for a strategic look-ahead - the utility bills 16,442 water customers, 91% of whom pay their water and/or sewer bills electronically. LCWSC installed 536 new water taps countywide in FY2023 and 186 new sewer taps (mostly in Northern Laurens County where subdivisions are under development). The utility has received $12.4 Million in water and sewer lines grant-money from various entities in the last 3 years.
The Strategic Plan idea was referred to the policies and personnel committee.
Field said it has taken 25 years for LCWSC to double the size of its operation, but he predicted another doubling will not take nearly that long in fast-growing Laurens County. LCWSC has more than 900 miles of pipe in the ground, and a water plant that is producing an average of 2.2 Million gallons per day.
At its Aug. 14 meeting, the Laurens County Council can expect to receive a LCWSC proposal for a new water tank behind the Laurens County Hospital, in a land swap deal (.89 acre) designed to make a proposed $9 Million project possible. The new, larger tank is about half of the overall project that includes distribution lines on Milam Road, and in the Professional Park between Clinton and Laurens.
The LCWSC board unanimously approved the utility’s role in the land-swap deal at its July 25 meeting, as one part of the utility’s long-range plan.
