The Birmingham City Council has approved the transfer of two sanitary sewer pump stations in the city’s Fairmont neighborhood to Jefferson County.

Operations of those stations already had been turned over to the county as part of a 1998 unification agreement, but the properties themselves had remained under city ownership.

The transfer involved three properties — 4150, 4530 and 4534 Lewisburg Road.

Birmingham was one of 21 cities to sign a unification agreement in April 1998 that transferred ownership of wastewater collection and conveyance systems to Jefferson County. But that agreement, which was intended to curtail “alleged violations of the clean water act from various municipalities that were under the county’s permit” did not explicitly include ownership of the property those stations sat on, said assistant city attorney Jim Stanley.

“What the unification agreement provided for is that the various cities would transfer their interest in these sewer facilities to the county, so they’re unified under the county’s control, since they had the permit,” Stanley told councilors on Tuesday. “The agreement states that it conveyed the actual facilities, but for real estate purposes it didn’t describe the properties and didn’t meet the actual requirements for conveyance.”

The two stations are in need of repair, Stanley said, but the county would need quitclaim deeds to the properties to “make necessary upgrades to the station.” The council voted unanimously to transfer those deeds.