Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Authority members voted unanimously Wednesday to recommend that a new $8 fee be imposed on all 24,000 WWTA customers served by gravity sewers.
The resulting $46 million in revenues – raised over a 20-year period – would be used to fund an aggressive Private Service Lateral Program designed to reduce influx and infiltration problems throughout the WWTA system, according to authority chairman Henry Hoss.
The program features systematic testing and repairs of the private service lateral lines that convey wastewater from WWTA customers’ homes or business properties to the main sewer line.
The laterals – which extend from the end of a structure’s internal plumbing to the connection with the WWTA sewer main – are owned by the customers.
The authority would pick up the entire cost of the testing and repairs, using revenues generated by the $8 monthly service fee to cover the expenses.
Work would begin on Signal Mountain, and then extend to other communities including East Ridge, Lookout Mountain and Red Bank.
The $8 fee, which would be imposed for a period of 20 years, would generate about $192,000 monthly or $2,304,000 per year.
“After a year or so, we anticipate the costs of the program will exceed the incoming revenues,” Mr. Hoss explained. “We would then pay the excess costs out of debt, and use the service fees to pay down debt.”
He said once a lateral line has been tested and repaired, it will become the responsibility of the customer who owns it to make sure it is properly maintained in the future.
The proposed Private Service Lateral Program was unveiled to authority members during a special meeting called to discuss ways to correct problems that led the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation to impose a moratorium on new sewer connections on Signal Mountain.
Mr. Hoss told authority members that a series of steps are necessary to comply with a TDEC order that it end improper discharges from Signal Mountain Treatment Plant into the Tennessee River during periods of heavy rainfall. Until that happens, he noted, the Signal Mountain moratorium on new connections will continue.
WWTA would like to close the Signal Mountain Treatment Plant, he said, and have effluent from the community treated at Moccasin Bend Sewage Treatment Plant.
He said the city of Chattanooga will allow the authority to connect Signal Mountain lines into its system – but only if WWTA is able to significantly reduce the amount of inflow and infiltration into those lines.
“In addition to Signal Mountain, the WWTA is aware that older parts of its system experience heavy volumes of influx and infiltration during rain events,” Mr. Hoss said. “Examples are Red Bank, East Ridge and Lookout Mountain.”
Consequently, he said, “WWTA needs to establish a Private Service Lateral Program to be applied throughout its system which will address the needs of all customers connected by gravity to its system.”
In order to reduce influx and infiltration throughout its system, he said, a series of steps will be implemented. They include:
1. Service lines from the home to the street will first be inspected to determine whether there are two clean-outs – one near the house and the second near the street – at each home served by a gravity line. If two clean-outs are not present, WWTA contractors will install them.
2. All service lines will be smoke-tested and camera-tested to determine whether they leak.
3. All defective lines will be repaired. All lines not made of PVC pipe will be replaced, as will defective PVC pipe. Further, all inappropriate connections – exteriors foundation drains, basement drains, roof downspouts, etc. – will be disconnected.
WWTA would pick up the entire cost for testing and any necessary repairs.
“We are estimating that the cost of steps 1 and 2 to be $250 to $350 per house,” Mr. Hoss said. “The cost of step 3 will be $3,000 to $5,000, or more, per house.”
WWTA plans to hold a public meeting on the Private Service Lateral Program on May 13 at Nolan Elementary School on Signal Mountain.