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The Harlan City Council met recently for the regular meeting for April, hearing updates on various issues including a washed-out sewer line caused by flooding in February and the status of multiple downtown buildings.

Harlan City Mayor Joe Meadors called the meeting to order and brought the panel up to speed on multiple matters within the city.

“About 2 weeks after that heavy rain event we had in February, we discovered that at Rosspoint, high water had washed out our sewer line,” Meadors said. “The flow of the water just completely ripped it out and we had to have that fixed.”

Meadors told the council the city has applied for funds to cover the expense.

“We’ve applied and we’ve been given preliminary approval that it will be reimbursed by FEMA,” Meadors said. “Of course, we had to pay for it up front to get it fixed, we couldn’t wait. Tim Akins with Akins contracting out of Corbin brought his boring machine here and they bored underneath the river and underneath the road and everything was fixed.”

Meadors advised the council the repair left the sewer line in better condition than before the incident. He also provided some information on an ongoing sewer repair project.

“The replacement of the main pump line from Huff edition to the old sewer plant in Baxter is about 95 percent complete,” Meadors said. “The only thing holding it up is there’s just a little bit of dressing to do with the earth work and he’s got to do some paving when the black top plant on Sukey Ridge opens up.”

Meadors said the project should be completed approximately 6 weeks before the originally expected June completion date.

Meadors then brought up a property on Main Street on which the city has taken legal action to have repaired.

“You did see his (City Attorney Scott Lisenbee) email to me concerning the property on Main Street,” Meadors said. “We went to court to force them to clean it up, and of course their response to that was they didn’t have the money to fix it.”

According to Meadors, the city then began a court action.

“We even went so far as the court appointed three commissioners to appraise the property,” Meadors said. “All they’ve done so far is clean up the canopy, and it looked pretty problematic when they tore it off, but at least it’s down to the metal. They’ve got an architect working on putting a new roof on. That’s all we ever wanted was for it to be fixed, be presentable, and maybe get some more tenants in there and maybe help our downtown area…at least we’re moving in the right direction.”

Meadors also mentioned the former J.J. Newberry’s location in downtown Harlan.

“We’ve got somebody interested in that,” Meadors said. “We don’t have a dog in that fight legally, because we don’t own the property…but there is somebody that has expressed interest, we’ll see how that develops.”

Meadors additionally provided an update on the former Belk’s location in downtown Harlan.

“I think they’re just waiting on some more grant money to finish up their fire suppression system,” Meadors said.