Magnolia to relocate sewer plant’s electrical service

A $135K hazard mitigation grant will fund the move

The Town of Magnolia was recently awarded a hazard mitigation grant of $135,000 to help with disaster prevention. According to Town Manager Charles “Twig” Rollins, the funding will enable them to move the town’s sewer plant electrical service to higher ground — away from the current area which is prone to flash flooding.

“The old electrical service was put there, like, 30 years ago and it’s in the flood-prone area,” Rollins told Duplin Journal, adding that when they have heavy rains and flash flooding, that area floods and if it gets bad it could cause the power to go off at the wastewater treatment plant.

“So, this will get it out of that flash-flood area into higher ground,” he explained. The next step for the town is to put it out for bid, and once it goes through the process, the town will schedule it with Duke Energy and make the transition.

“I anticipate it’d probably be by the end of summer before the project would be complete, to early fall,” said Rollins, adding that it will be an easy transition. He doesn’t expect power outages, but they have a generator in case of any eventuality.

“We’ll inform the public if the power goes out. If we do, it will be very momentarily, would be my suspicion, but that’s going to be left up to the electrical people,” said Rollins.

In other news, at the May 14 regular meeting, the Magnolia town board accepted an offer from Blackburn Development to buy 32 acres of land that the town owns.

“Based on the zoning, it could possibly mean up to 100 new houses,” said Rollins about the offer, which is currently in the upset bid process. 

“And when that’s all said and done, the only thing that can be done on that piece of property is residential based on its current zoning.”

Rollins shared that this could be a game changer for the town of Magnolia.

“The potential is a nice subdivision with a significant increase in the population of Magnolia, with all the benefits that come with new growth, and hopefully it will attract more service businesses to our area,” he said.

Rollins added that it could potentially increase the town’s population by 25% or more.