UPDATED: Expansion of sewage treatment plant completed, millennium now permitted to proceed in NA.

2:10 p.m.: With respect to former Mayor Regina Overton's non-attendance at the ceremony described below, NA Confidential can now confirm that she was invited and apparently declined to accept. We welcome further information if you have any. Thanks.

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New Albany's favorite topic, sewage, is back in the news (and we don't mean the septic tone of the "conversation" over at Speak Out, Lout (NA).

EPA to check New Albany sewers; Ongoing disputes to be discussed, by Ben Zion Hershberg of the Courier-Journal (short shelf life for C-J links).

Here are excerpts:

Federal officials will be in New Albany next month to inspect the city's recently completed sewage-system expansion and to discuss continuing disputes with the city, Mayor James Garner said yesterday …

… Greg Fifer, the lawyer for the New Albany Sewer Board, said he believes the disputes will be resolved without court action after next month's visit.

Garner and Fifer were interviewed during a ceremony yesterday morning, at the city's sewage-treatment plant on West 10th Street, to celebrate the completion of the $40 million expansion project.

NA Confidential has been told that the former New Albany mayor, Regina Overton, did not attend yesterday’s expansion project completion ceremony.

Readers, do any of you know whether she was invited and declined to attend, or simply was not invited?

Given Overton’s estrangement from city politics since her re-election defeat in 2003, it would be understandable if she chose not to join the celebration, but it would be an obvious breach of etiquette for an invitation not to have been issued in her name.

After all, she initiated the necessary expansion work, took the heat for the expense, and should accordingly receive her share of the credit.

Anyone know?

You'll find yet more sewer coverage in Expanded sewer plant is officially opened, by Chris Morris, Tribune Managing Editor.

In the article, Chris quotes 22-year city council veteran "Slippery" Larry Kochert as saying that while sewer problems always "will pop up" every now and then, the city intends to "stay on top of this."

Whatever our differences with CM Kochert, we believe he's on track with this observation.

Kochert then insisted that county residents be restricted to using designated pay toilets while visiting the city, so as to ensure that they're paying a "fair share" of the sewer system's expansion cost.