Earlier this month, a meeting between the City of Camden Point, the Camden Point Fire Department, the City’s Athletic Association and recent Powerball winner Mark Hill outlined details of potential plans for a new fire station, ball park and other improvements.

Getting overlooked in all that excitement was this: the City had finally acquired land to move forward with its $3.65 million sewer system project.

As first reported earlier this month by The Citizen, Camden Point closed on a land deal just hours before a New Year’s Eve deadline. If it had failed to obtain the land before this deadline, City officials said plans to purchase the long sought-after land could have been in jeopardy. After a joint effort by the City to get a survey and land appraisal done, 6.51 acres of land just north of Camden Point will become the new home of the Camden Point sewer system wastewater treatment plant facility.

But the entire process would not have come to pass if not for recent Powerball lottery winners, the Hill Family, who decided to give back to the community they grew up in with a $60,000 donation to purchase the property.

“Camden Point needs a sewer system,” Mark Hill said at the special meeting at the Camden Point Community Center earlier this month. “Like most small towns, they have limited assets, and I’m a big advocate. My grandma lived here. I lived here. My mother lives here. I’m a big advocate of that. They needed my help, and I was there to help them.”

The City has been in a holding pattern for almost two years as it tried to acquire land to finally begin building the $3.65 million sewer system approved in 2011 by voters. The City previously approached several members of the Camden Point area without success, but finally caught a break when one of the area residents the City had approached said OK — with one requirement.

“She wanted to close before the last day of the year to sell it to us,” Camden Point Alderman Mark Wagoner said. “If we went past the end of the year, she didn’t want to sell it.”

A land survey and appraisal were approved by the Camden Point Board of Aldermen in early December, and Camden Point made good in its agreement. The City — with the Hill Family donation sealing the deal — closed the deal at 2 p.m. Dec. 31, 2011. Now, engineering firm Larkin Group is working on its engineering survey of the property.

FOR MORE ON THIS STORY, SEE THE PRINTED VERSION OF THE CITIZEN.