GETAWAY — Now that the sewer plant at Collins Career Center is complete, linking the neighboring subdivisions onto the line is the next step.

That’s why at its Tuesday work session the Lawrence County Commissioners authorized the manager of the Union-Rome Sewer District to find competitive rates for borrowing up to $1 million to pay for the county’s part of that project.

“When we started our renovation project (at the vocational school), the county approached us about upgrading our sewer plant to help them provide better service to the surrounding subdivisions that are on county water,” Richard Sketel, treasurer of the Collins center, said.

Indian Hills and Farmview are the two subdivisions to be hooked into the Collins system as their systems have become obsolete.

“Their sewers were ready for an upgrade as well,” Sketel said. “We about tripled the size of our plant to help the county out. The county is going to pick up their portion of it.”

Originally the plant was to have a capacity of 10,000 gallons. Now that has been expanded to 30,000 gallons with the Union-Rome Sewer District’s portion of the expense to be approximately $340,000.

That will be on top of the cost of sewer lining and rehabilitation of the existing gravity lines and building a pump station. Total cost is expected to range from $750,000 to $1 million.

“(The plant) is completed and is ready to go,” Sketel said. “Then we turn it over to the county. The county will assume ownership of it. It will be more useful to them.”