Gerth: Turning down sewers was a crappy decision that held back Valley Station for years

There was a time not all that long ago that the further you got past Rockford Lane, driving west on Dixie Highway, things got fewer and further in between.

When I worked for the Courier Journal’s old Neighborhoods section in the late 1980s and early 1990s, sometimes covering Southwest Jefferson County, the biggest complaint I heard from the folks who lived in Valley Station and Pleasure Ridge Park was there just weren’t many restaurants.

Beyond the Kingfish that sat on Dixie near Greenwood Road and Jessie’s Family Restaurant near Valley High School, there really wasn’t much in the way of “sit-down” restaurants where you could go, relax and have someone bring food to your table.

There really weren’t many fast-food restaurants either.

All-in-all, it was pretty bleak.

Without dining options, stores didn’t want to locate there, leaving the old Westland Mall-turned-Park Place Mall and other commercial properties struggling to lure stores and keep them there.

It was, in many ways, a self-inflicted wound.

Restaurants, hotels and other businesses that used significant amounts of water didn’t want to build there because there weren’t any sewers beyond Rockford Lane and business owners didn’t want the headache of maintaining septic tanks.

And residents didn’t want sewers.

More from Joe Gerth: ‘It’s affordable housing for cats’: Why this neighborhood is overrun by felines

No sewers meant few restaurants

In 1993, the manager of the old Kingfish told a Courier Journal reporter the restaurant sometimes had to have its septic tank pumped out twice a week.

Going back to the 1970s, the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) had plans to extend sewer lines from Rockford Lane to the Gene Snyder Freeway, which would have opened the entire area up to better restaurants and more businesses. But the people in Pleasure Ridge Park and Valley Station didn’t want them because of the cost.

Led by the late Omer Chesser, known as “Shorty” because he stood just 5-foot-4, the residents who belonged to the Homeowners Association of Southwest Jefferson County, fought off efforts to install sewers.

In 1977, the group filed suit, delaying the project for years.

The argument was that some of the neighborhoods had small package treatment plants that dumped treated waste into small streams in the area, and the vast majority of homes were on septic tanks, which required minimum upkeep.

And, in the minds of the people, those package plants and septic tanks worked fine.

It didn’t matter that Mill Creek, which starts near Shively and dumps into the Ohio River near Watson Lane was “worse than an open sewer” because it had more than 40 times the allowable amount of bacteria according to a 1981 study.

Those septic tanks worked great.

In the 1980s, the Southwest Jefferson County Business Association decided enough was enough and started pushing for sewers. They knew that the lack of them was holding the entire area back.

More from Gerth: Why the Shively housewife is an outdated – and nearly impossible – standard now

At some point, MSD turned to a vote to determine if people wanted sewers.

In 1993, residents said “no” by a count of 398-341.

That came after someone distributed leaflets in the area claiming that it would cost $7,000 to hook onto the sewers. The real cost was between $3,500 to $6,650 – with the vast majority closer to the $3,500 figure.

After that MSD turned to smaller projects and neighborhood votes and began making progress.

Now, sewer lines extend out Dixie Highway to Kosmosdale, said Sheryl Lauder, a spokeswoman for MSD – 11.9 miles further than where they were in the 1970s.

And the area is booming.

None of the restaurants are going to get a Michelin star, mind you, but there’s plenty of food along Dixie Highway and it’s a far sight better than the limited options three decades ago.

State Sen. David Yates said some of the growth has to do with improvements in planning and zoning along with a rebuild of Dixie Highway that was undertaken some years ago. But he said the addition of sewers has opened the door for a lot of businesses – particularly restaurants.

The first big restaurant to come was in the early 1990s when it became clear sewers were on the way and Marks Feed Store built a shop. But since then, you’ve seen Cracker Barrel build near the Gene Snyder, there’s a Waffle House and there are numerous local restaurants like Christi’s Café, Khalil’s (owned by Metro Councilman Khalil Batson) and more Mexican restaurants than you can count.

(Last month, Chef Edward Lee gave a plug to Christi's Cafe in Southern Living Magazine, recommending it as the place to grab a good breakfast before heading out on Bourbon tours in and around Louisville. It really is excellent.)

“Going back, we could have done things differently,” Yates said.

There are big box stores now in Valley Station that didn’t exist just a couple of decades ago.

And beyond the Gene Snyder, there are a couple of huge apartment complexes – one built and another under construction – that Yates said were built to serve people who work in and around Fort Knox but want to live in Louisville.

They would never have materialized without sewers.

When I told Yates that his late grandfather, former state Rep. Jim Yates, opposed the sewer expansion, he laughed and said it was likely because of the cost to his constituents, adding that he was very frugal.

Yates said the area still hasn’t caught up with other parts of Louisville when it comes to dining choices – and it was set back by COVID which he said forced a number of locally-owned businesses to shut their doors.

But he said the region is bouncing back.

I can promise you that my coworkers and I are glad there are more and better restaurants in the area than a couple of decades ago. We’ll be working out of our “mobile newsroom” at the Southwest Regional Library for the next couple of weeks and we’ll be looking for good places to eat.

Drop me a line, and let me know your favorites.

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: This Louisville area was held back by stinky sewage decision