by Judy Frank
posted May 20, 2008
Red Bank officials said Tuesday night that they will fight what they consider to be an unfair across-the-board $8 monthly fee that Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Authority (WWTA) wants to impose on its 24,000 customers served by gravity sewers.
City Manager Chris Dorsey said he plans to attend WWTA’s meeting at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday and ask that the proposal be reconsidered. Red Bank’s representative on the authority, Wayne Hamill, also will be present.
“I don’t believe many of the board members realize that WWTA customers in Red Bank are already paying a 40 percent monthly surcharge,” Mr. Dorsey said. Tacking on an additional $8 surcharge “would require Red Bank ratepayers to pay over double the amount (paid by customers in other areas),” he noted.
The 40 percent surcharge already imposed on Red Bank residents equals about $8.71 per month, according to Mr. Dorsey.
“With the proposed across-the-board increase, Red Bank customers will be paying $16.71 extra per month, while everybody else will pay $8,” the city manager said.
The double charge is particularly unfair, the city manager said, because the median income in Red Bank – $33,848 – is lower than in other Hamilton County municipalities.
Lookout Mountain, TN. – with a median income of $100,782 – ranks highest, he noted. Other median incomes, in descending order, are:
* Ridgeside – $88,996
* Walden – $68,977
* Signal Mountain – $66,900
* Lakesite – $54,219
* Soddy Daisy – $37,163
* East Ridge – $36,347
Earlier this month, WWTA members voted 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.
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.
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.
Tuesday night, Mr. Dorsey said WWTA’s first priority is to correct infiltration and inflow problems on Signal Mountain, where the median income is twice as high as that in Red Bank. The next community where sewage improvements are to be made is Lookout Mountain, with a median income three times that of Red Bank.
Although WWTA plans to eventually extend the improvement program to Red Bank, he said, that sewage system there underwent extensive work aimed at reducing inflow and infiltration into sewer lines just a little more than a decade ago. That’s how the $20 million debt that the current 40 percent surcharge is intended to pay off was incurred.
Since Red Bank’s lines are in comparatively good shape, work will be scheduled first in other communities where lines are old and problems have not been corrected, he said. And that’s fine, so long as Red Bank residents are not charged twice for the same improvements.
WWTA should either rescind the current 40 percent surcharge imposed in Red Bank and charge residents the same $8 fee it charges everybody else – or it should recuse Red Bank customers from paying the new fee, he said.
“We believe all Hamilton County residents on WWTA should be paying the same rate,” the city manager and Red Bank Mayor Joe Glasscock said in a letter to WWTA board members, Hamilton County commissioners and Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey.
Red Bank officials emphasized that they have nothing against Signal Mountain, where the state imposed a moratorium because of ongoing improper discharges into the Tennessee River.
Their quarrel is with WWTA leaders who, rather than treating Signal Mountain residents as they did the residents of Red Bank, decided to impose a new fee on customers throughout the county.
When WWTA took over management of the sewers in Red Bank, Mr. Dorsey said, the authority insisted on imposing a 40 percent surcharge on customers in the town to pay off the $20 million debt for improvements to the system.
Now the authority is faced with a state order to end discharges of untreated sewage into the Tennessee River from the Signal Mountain Sewage Treatment Plant, he explained.
But rather than imposing an additional charge on its customers on Signal Mountain, the authority wants to impose an additional $8 monthly fee on all 24,000 WWTA gravity system customers.
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