Park receives funding to expand its trails
Grovetown officials are anticipating the beginning of several city projects that will benefit residents.
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At Monday's city council meeting, Mayor Dennis Trudeau said the city will be soliciting bids this month to construct the second phase of The Trails at Euchee Creek.
The park, which opened in the spring of 2004 on 44.7 acres of land bordering Euchee Creek at Harlem-Grovetown Road, includes two miles of trails, a rock den, parking area, a 100-foot-deep stocked pond, a 300-foot bridge, rock outcroppings, picnic areas and an overlook.
The trails stretch behind Grovetown Middle School. The construction will extend the trails to meet Wrightsboro Road and allow middle school pupils to study biology and nature firsthand in the park.
Trudeau said the project will extend and loop the existing trails and will eliminate a few of the dead-end trails so park visitors will not have to walk the same trail twice.
The project will be funded by $300,000 from the Georgia Department of Transportation and $75,000 of city money.
"Hopefully, it will start probably some time at the end of February or the beginning of March," Trudeau said.
City officials also are waiting for approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for an Augusta sewer line extension into Columbia County and Grovetown.
City officials agreed to give $500,000 to Augusta as part of an existing construction contract.
"They are at the Columbia County line," Trudeau said at the meeting. "They are waiting for us to get clearance from the Corps of Engineers to continue that line."
When complete, the line will redirect about 100,000 gallons of the 300,000 sent daily to a Columbia County treatment facility to one in Richmond County.
The 5,000-foot line is slated to run from the county line near Gordon Highway up the Butler Creek Basin into the city.
In other action, city officials also discussed how the state legislature must approve a change to the city's charter before city officials can begin looking for a city administrator or manager.
"There is not a provision in that charter for a city manager or administrator," City Councilman David Daughtry said. "We need them to approve us a slot to put a city manager/administrator in there."