AFTER 46 YEARS, WOMAN WINS BATTLE FOR SEWERS TO HOME

SCOTT CITY -- It's been a long wait for Glema Milligan, but 46 years after she first requested it, she's finally going to get city sewer service to her home and adjacent property in Scott City.

"I'm just a little perturbed about this. I've taken all I can take," she said. "It's been way too long and I think I've been more than patient."

Milligan, whose home is along Cape Street, owns three lots next to her property lots she's been trying to sell for years but can't because they aren't hooked up to the city's sewer system.

She said prospective owners of the property have been refused bank loans because of the lack of sewers.

And because she can't sell them, Milligan said she has to keep mowing the lots.

Milligan said she first asked the city to extend sewer service to her property which is inside city limits when she purchased it 46 years ago.

From time to time, she's gone back to the city to ask them again. Two years ago, she said, city officials told her money was being allocated for construction of sewer lines to her home.

But somehow, she said, construction never began.

"They told me another lady had been waiting for 12 years, but 12 years is a drop in the bucket," she said.

Until she threatened the city with a lawsuit last week, she didn't get any action, she said.

"I was born and raised here, and I thought I deserved to be treated better," she said. "I told them I was getting an attorney."

But first she called City Councilman Ron Oller and asked him to help her one last time to get sewer service. She said she told him if the city didn't do something soon, she'd sue.

"I'd gone as far as I was going to go with them," she said.

Oller brought up Milligan's plight at the council's regular meeting this week, and the council promptly authorized construction of sewer lines to Milligan's property.

"She needs to get these services," Mayor Shirley Young said at the meeting. "There's no question about it; she's been overlooked."

Public Works Director Harold Uelsmann said Milligan's request was one of many the city has received. He said her requests haven't been pushed aside, but in the time since he's been public works director, the city has not had the funds to extend sewer lines to her property.

He said an engineering firm was hired Tuesday to begin work on the project.

"There are other areas of town that have never had sewer either," Uelsmann said. "And we just don't have the manpower or the money to do more than one project at a time."

Uelsmann said a sewer bond issue passed in 1985 paid for a lagoon and improvements to the city's lift stations, but provided no money for house connections.

City crews just finished working on about 10 house connections along Lincoln Street, Uelsmann said, and Milligan's property is next.

"Now that it's been approved by the council, we can get going on it," he said, adding it will take several months to construct sewer lines to Milligan's property.