Davie County is going ahead with plans to build a sewage treatment plant on the Yadkin River in the eastern part of the county.

But in the meantime, the county is near capacity with the amount of wastewater it can send to Forsyth County.

At their meeting this month, commissioners agreed to an amendment to the contract with the City-County Utilities Commission in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County. It will allow Davie to pump an additional 200,000 gallons of wastewater a day to Forsyth County – from 550,000 gallons to 750,000 gallons.

Johnny Lambert, Davie’s director of public utilities, told commissioners the county expects to be online with its own plant by 2018. That’s when Davie would have to pay Forsyth more than $1 million for construction of upgrades to that system. Davie will have to pay $150,000 for design of those upgrades early in 2017.

“We want to be as aggressive as possible with this (new) wastewater treatment plant and move forward,” Lambert said. “We plan to be out by 2017.”

Expected costs of the new treatment plant should be available soon, Lambert said. The county is close to having numbers to submit for a long permitting process.

The amendment to the 1996 agreement with Forsyth includes no up front costs, but is necessary. “The capacity in eastern Davie is getting close to a shortage,” Lambert said.