By Brian Gilliland

GEORGETOWN — What Sussex County employees thought was a faulty fitting late last year ended up being the failure of an 18-inch sewer line serving Bethany Beach.

And it’s now requiring the county to set aside $1.9 million in extra repair money for the rest of the year, a move County Council approved Tuesday.

Council handles construction projects like this through a general labor and equipment contract, and has since 2017 to great effect, said council president Michael Vincent and the county’s engineer at the time, Hans Medlarz, on Tuesday. The current contract, to Dover’s George & Lynch, is set to expire in June and was valued at $5 million.

However, Mr. Medlarz explained, those funds have been exhausted, and the county needs another $1.6 million to replenish what Bethany Beach took for the sewer line repairs, as well as additional funds.

“We’re trying to put that money back, plus $300,000 in case there should be an emergency,” he said. “Unfortunately, it moved us away from other projects we wanted to do. The money is one part, but the lost productivity” affected other initiatives in the pipeline.

What hadn’t been factored into the equation was what was thought to be a sinkhole that appeared in Bethany Beach in fall 2023.

“In 99% of cases, it’s associated with a lateral tie-in — the fitting breaks — so, we dug down and figured (we’d) fix the fitting, right?” Mr. Medlarz said.

But, upon examining the situation, workers found something else entirely: the complete failure of the line.

“Little did we know, after we (examined) the pipe, we had to line the whole stretch all the way across Garfield Parkway,” he explained. Liners are one method of mitigating PVC pipe failure, and this method is significantly cheaper than replacing the entire line immediately.

The system was designed in the 1970s and built in the 1980s, he continued, acknowledging that PVC pipes from that era can become brittle if exposed to ultraviolet light, but they are not usually affected when buried, as these were. Moreover, he said, only one type of pipe was affected — the 18-inch gravity sewer line and not the 12- and 15-inch lines contemporaneously installed.

There is an explanation, though.

“The 18-inch pipe, at this time, it was probably the first time it was made. Now, they can make 24-inch PVC pipe, they can make 30-inch PVC pipe, but back then, they couldn’t,” he explained. Mr. Medlarz suggested the technology behind the manufacture of the pipes was responsible for the failure.

Following the meeting, the engineer confirmed that such 18-inch piping is used elsewhere in the county but was installed later than the Bethany Beach line. Therefore, he believes, the issue is contained.