Johnstown, Alexandria and Granville have taken more steps toward solidifying a relationship their leaders say is necessary to preserve their rural, small-town character in the face of a fast-moving wave of development in western Licking County.
They’re doing this through a coalition to control water and sewer service in their communities and the surrounding townships of Monroe (Johnstown), St. Albans (Alexandria) and Granville Township.
So they selected a name for the organization – the Municipal Utility Coalition of Licking County – and hired a consultant to develop a plan for providing water and sewer service to homes and businesses across those townships.
“We’re not merging services, changing billing, negotiating rates or anything like that,” said Granville Village Manager Herb Koehler.
But the communities want to have a plan within about six months so that their utility coalition can present it to county, state and federal officials who would be asked to sign off on utility boundaries and funding for the utility coalition’s facilities and services.
He said the coalition has hired the utility planning firm EMH&T of New Albany to develop “a comprehensive facility plan, which will evaluate projected needs for both water and sanitary sewer service in the region over the next 20-plus years and determine how the coalition can best meet these needs.”
Johnstown and Granville have their own water and sewage-treatment facilities. Granville provides water to Alexandria residents. And Alexandria has a small sewage-treatment facility. Working together, they seek to leverage those assets to control their own destiny. Combined, the utilities serve more than 12,000 people living and working in western Licking County.
Koehler and leaders in the other communities have said repeatedly that they do not believe they can manage growth and development to their community standards and plans set by the three municipalities and three townships if utilities come from another provider – namely, the Southwest Licking Community Water and Sewer District, which also has a new name.
The district now known as the Licking Regional Water District said in a release that the name change “reflects the district’s commitment to supporting regional growth and ensuring inclusive representation across its expanding service area.”
The name change and expansion of the utility’s board to five members from the current three were approved in an order from the Licking County Common Pleas Court.
“The court’s approval affirms our board’s vision of strategic service expansion that meets the needs of our customers and aligns with the rapid development in Licking County,” said Jim Roberts, executive director of the Licking Regional Water District. “The updated board structure, coupled with our new name, reinforces our mission to provide excellent service and grow in tandem with the communities we serve. We are focused on a smooth transition and are excited to embark on this new chapter.”
That utility currently serves communities and rural areas in the southwest corner of the county, but the Licking County Commissioners expanded its designated service area in 2022 by nearly 10,000 acres to 18,182 acres west of Granville Township. Licking Regional Water District has the authority to provide services north to the Johnstown area in unincorporated portions of Monroe and Jersey townships, and to the east in St. Albans Township.
LRWD bought more than 90 acres in St. Albans Township in 2023 on which to build a water and waste-water treatment plant.
Alexandria Mayor Sean Barnes said the purchase by the utility formerly known as Southwest Licking so close to Alexandria brings urgency to the situation, in part because of the environmental concerns about treated wastewater flowing into Moots Run and then Raccoon Creek.
But he said the Johnstown-Alexandria-Granville utility coalition is “more about all of the growth and development moving our way.
“The growth part is a big factor,” Barnes said. “For Alexandria, we’re not seeing the push just yet, but we know it’s coming. By solidifying this coalition, it gives us the resources for planning and preparing for the future. We all three share similar vision in terms of development – the desire to remain rural.”
Koehler said the current water and sewer service-area boundaries and plans were developed before Intel announced plans for its $28 million computer-chip manufacturing campus on nearly 1,000 acres just south of Johnstown – and all the related development that is either underway or anticipated.
He said the Municipal Utility Coalition of Licking County “is an effort that recognizes that development is coming,” and one that is designed “to support local considerations that may not be as development intensive” as what might happen without local control over the utilities.
Johnstown City Manager Sean Staneart said the city next door to the Intel development “is genuinely trying to embrace the opportunity provided by the announcement of Intel. We’ve been told at so many levels that this opportunity will be tremendous for our community. But this opportunity can only be realized if the Municipal Utility Coalition of Licking County is empowered to be the designated service provider.”
He said that without a modification to the service boundaries, “we will be a whisper in the conversation as it relates to all economic development, school district growth, and the needs of our community. In a nutshell, development will be built around us and literally through us, rather than for us and by us.”
“If we are given this responsibility, we are confident we can facilitate the needs of our growing region,” Staneart said. “Building strong communities and strong school districts is what we do. Our respective municipalities were established over 200 years ago, and we’ve been providing water and sewer services for a large portion of that time. We asked that we be allowed to write our own story and not have it drafted for us.”
School districts – specifically Granville and Johnstown-Monroe – are a significant factor in the coalition’s goals to manage growth.
“Unless economic development is thoughtfully and holistically managed, expanded water and wastewater services will result in unplanned and fragmented growth and that, in turn, would create a crisis for western Licking County schools,” Jeff Brown, Superintendent of Granville Exempted Village Schools, said in a release. “Therefore, utility expansion should always be aligned with a comprehensive strategy, a strategy that has been developed with input from and acceptance by the residents and other stakeholders.”
Denison University President Adam Weinberg raised that point in a letter to Gov. Mike DeWine and Anne Vogel, director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, when he wrote that “Denison’s interests align closely with the coalition’s vision:
“We want to ensure strategic, well-timed development that keeps pace with the capacity of local services, schools and infrastructure. Uncontrolled, rapid growth has battered other communities, overwhelming their resources and degrading quality of life. By empowering the coalition, we can embrace growth while avoiding the pitfalls of expansion plans that outpace local services.”
Weinberg also wrote that Denison wants “to make sure that regional development does not unduly impact our regional watersheds and the environmental resources that keep the community healthy and make this area special.”
And he wrote that the Johnstown-Alexandria-Granville utility coalition’s “collaborative, holistic approach is superior to alternatives like the Southwest Licking Community Water and Sewer District,” because he said that a consortium of local governments is directly accountable to their residents and committed to collaborative, strategic community planning.
In contrast, he wrote, the newly renamed Southwest Licking – now Licking Regional Water District – “as a stand-alone entity, lacks meaningful local representation and accountability, with its primary focus being on expanding its customer base.”
Roberts, of Licking Regional Water, said Thursday that the utility is “still open to the conversations we’ve been having” with Johnstown, Alexandria and Granville representatives. “They’ve slowed down, but we’re certainly open to talking with them.”
In the meantime, he said the utility is moving forward with its efforts to obtain EPA permits that would allow it to build and operate “the Raccoon Plant,” the wastewater treatment plant it plans for the land it purchased in St. Albans Township.
It had submitted a permit request early this year. “We received comments back from the EPA on the permit, and we will be resubmitting it back to the EPA in the next month,” Roberts said. “And we continue to work on designs for the plant.”
It also is building a water tower along the south side of Rt. 161 west of Rt. 310. The base of the tower is in place, and the bowl to hold the water should be in place early in 2025, he said.
“We’re moving full-steam ahead,” he said.
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.