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Willisville Still Waiting for Indoor Plumbing
"It was not a good day," said Brown, recalling that several Willisville residents had gathered to watch the opening of the bids, only to leave with as little hope as ever that the plumbing would ever come.
The county then approached a nonprofit housing agency based in Middleburg, the Windy Hill Foundation, to manage the project and hire subcontractors to do the work.
  Only a handful of homes in Willisville have indoor plumbing. Others, such as Emma Howard's, above, still are reliant on outhouses. (By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post) Save & Share |
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Windy Hill agreed, but the setback cost the project 90 days, Brown said.
Further complicating matters were new, higher estimates for the cost of installing Willisville's treatment system and drain field. The Board of Supervisors tentatively agreed last week to bear the additional cost, bringing the grand total for the Willisville system to $995,000 -- more than $90,000 for each of the 11 properties to be hooked up to the system.
Willisville's residents are responsible for $105,000 of that cost, money borrowed through a state program and to be paid back in monthly installments over 10 years.
The total doesn't include, however, the cost of connecting homes to the system, drilling new wells or adding bathrooms and kitchen sinks and washing-machine hookups inside the homes. That cost is estimated at about $300,000, and all but $25,000 will be paid by county agencies. The remainder will be raised privately by the Windy Hill Foundation.
A groundbreaking is scheduled for Saturday, and Brown is optimistic that the project can be completed by December -- if not with the drain field installed and working, then at least to the point where the plumbing works and the tank's contents can be pumped and hauled.
It all depends on the weather and on whether more unforeseen delays pop up on a project that has seen more than its share.
"I'm hoping the weather holds," Brown told supervisors last week, "and I can invite you to a flushing party in December."
