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BLACKSBURG - Blacksburg Town Manager Gary Huff is in the awkward position of telling his seven bosses on town council to hurry up and make some big decisions about the town's future growth.

He put it very diplomatically at a joint meeting of the town council and planning commission Monday. But the point was clear: How big a sewer should Blacksburg build, and how much growth should the town allow? All the sewage from the north end of town drains into a 15-inch sewer pipe that runs along Kabrich Street. The manhole on that street is full of sewage, even on dry days. During rainstorms, the sewage rolls out of it, over the street and into a tributary of Stroubles Creek.

To fix it, the town must install a bigger pipe. But how big should the pipe be?

Huff told the council and commissioners Monday that he would need some answers, perhaps as soon as next week, when council will meet for a work session.

"We can't wait to solve it. ... We can't wait for a period of study," Huff said.

After 30 years of dealing with sewer issues, council came close last year to alleviating the capacity issues by building an exceptionally controversial gravity sewer in the least-developed part of town. But council canceled the construction contracts after residents voted out two pro-Toms Creek sewer candidates.

Since the election, council has decided to commission an engineering firm to study the sewer system.

Part of the rush is that the decision and the construction must include Virginia Tech because the university owns parts of the line.

Planning and Engineering Director Adele Schirmer and Huff have been negotiating with Tech officials in recent weeks to upgrade sections of that sewer line with bigger pipes to handle the flow, Huff said.

It's up to council, not engineers, to determine the size of the pipe because it must be big enough to deal with not only the toilets that get flushed every day in the north end, but also all the toilets that might be installed there in the future.

"When you build a sewer, you build it to last 50 years," Schirmer told council at a recent work session.

Council must decide if it will be annexing any toilets that sit just over the town border in developments such as Preston Forest or if it should serve the toilets in the Toms Creek Basin.

And if it serves the Toms Creek Basin, how many toilets will be installed there in the coming years?

But council can't just put in a huge pipe and hope for the best. If the pipe is too big, sewer flow will slow to a crawl, sewage will sit in thepipe and it will begin to smell, Schirmer said.

Huff told council last year that the town's insurance carrier, the Virginia Municipal League, said it might not pay future damage claims caused by overflows if the town doesn't soon fix the problems.

The problem is also affecting local landowners.

Three years ago Michael Ankrum, a Blacksburg dentist, envisioned building a new office for his practice on 3 acres at the corner of Patrick Henry Drive and Progress Street.

He bought the land because he thought he could sell the front of the lot to a commercial developer and use the money to finance construction of his office, he said.

But Ankrum hasn't been able to do anything with the land because the town won't let him connect to its overloaded north end sewer system.

"I'm not trying to find fault with anybody. Town council has been very open," he said. "It's my opinion that the town wants this problem solved. The staff wants the council to make a decision and fix it."

Last November, council approved a new north end housing development proposed by SAS Construction, a Montgomery County development firm. The company will eventually build more than 60 houses on the site of the old Echols Mobile Home Park - if its engineers can find a way to offset the sewage created by the development.

SAS owner Jeanne Stosser couldn't be reached for comment Friday. But in the past she has said that her engineers are surveying the town's sewer system for broken pipes, leaky manholes and houses with roof drains illegally hooked into the sewer system.

If SAS can come up with ways to take some water out of the system - with its own staff and funding - the company can build the development.

But it takes a lot of money to do that kind of work, money that Ankrum and Lindsay Coleman, who can't build on his 2 acres off Giles Road because of sewer problems, don't have. So their land sits idle.

Ankrum said his land value has gone down to zero because he can't do anything with it.

"Would you buy a piece of land you couldn't do anything with?" he asked.

Sewer pipe sizes and future growth are council's agenda for the Jan. 18 work session.