Dallas County commissioners were “pleasantly surprised” to learn Monday they may not have to use about $20,000 they expected to spend in funding the Dellwood sewer project. 

The good news came during Monday’s commission meeting, when Dallas County engineer Coosa Jones announced that the outdated sewage pipes that caused 10 years of sewer draining and clogging issues in the Dellwood Estates community “were not in as bad of shape as everyone thought.”

Therefore, the commission may be able to save about $20,000 of the $400,000 it expects to spend in funding the project.

In early July, the commission approved Suncoast Infrastructure Inc.’s $319,546.14 bid to complete the project.

“We have to wait until the end of the project, because it’s a quantity-based project,” Probabte Judge Kim Ballard said.

“If they don’t have to use as much quantity as we think, we still may come in at budget. The worst-case scenario is that we’ll make about $25,000 over budget, which is, on a $400,000 project, is not bad. We’d rather not, but it’s not bad at all.”

The clogging is a result of the houses having 8-inch wide pipes with built up debris over the past several decades, decreasing the total capacity, commissioner Larry Nickles said in a previous Times-Journal interview.

The commission received a $350,000 grant from the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs in November to fix sewage pipelines.