Congress, Not Signal Mountain, Blamed For New Requirements
by Judy Frank
posted May 21, 2008
Sparks flew Wednesday as members of Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Authority debated how best to pay the millions of dollars it will cost to repair sewer lines throughout the WWTA system.
“The problem is that the general public thinks Signal Mountain is to blame for this,” Soddy-Daisy Mayor Bob Privett declared. “What they don’t understand is that every sewer system (in WWTA) is going to have to be repaired . . . This is something that was imposed on us by Congress. We’ve got to get this problem fixed and the money has to come from somewhere.”
Wednesday, WWTA members voted to delay imposition of a proposed new $8 monthly fee on customers served by gravity sewers.
WWTA members said their phones have rung off the hook since customers learned about the proposed fee.
“I’ve been hammered bad over ‘those rich folks up on Signal Mountain,’” Mayor Privett said. “The public doesn’t realize this has nothing to do with Signal Mountain.”
Likewise, the board deferred action on a proposal that customers in Red Bank no longer be required to pay rates higher than those imposed on residents of other areas. That proposal, if approved, “has the potential to put the entire system into insolvency,” WWTA attorney John Anderson said flatly.
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, authority chairman Henry Hoss explained at the time.
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. Work would begin on Signal Mountain, where sewage treatment problems led to a moratorium on new hookups, and extend later to customers elsewhere.
There are significant inflow and infiltration problems throughout the WWTA system, members noted.
For example, Lookout Mountain sewer lines used to carry away eight times as much water as Tennessee-American Water Co. shipped into the community, officials said. The extra effluent was groundwater that managed to seep into the sewer lines and consequently also had to be treated.
Currently, WWTA customers in Red Bank are paying a 40 percent monthly surcharge that is used to pay off debt the city incurred before the authority took over the sewer system.
Red Bank City Manager Christopher Dorsey, who attended Wednesday’s WWTA meeting, said an additional $8 fee would require Red Bank ratepayers to pay more than double the amount paid by other customers.
The 40 percent surcharge imposed on Red Bank residents equals about $8.71 per month. If the proposed across-the-board increase goes into effect, Red Bank customers will be paying $16.71 extra per month while everybody else pays $8, he 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.
Wayne Hamill, Red Bank’s representative on the board, said he is not opposed to making needed improvements throughout the WWTA system or asking customers to pay for them.
“I want to see if we can slow down and review this and see if there’s a fairer way . . . I want the Hamilton County residents who happen to live in Red Bank to pay the same rates as everybody else,” he explained.
Bill Lusk, Signal Mountain’s representative, proposed that extra charges no longer be imposed on customers in Red Bank. Instead, the amount of income generated by those charges could be raised through a small across-the-board increase through the WWTA system, he suggested.
“To me, the idea of having a county-wide system is that you spread the costs over a broader base . . . (so) everybody’s in the same boat,” he said, noting that his proposal was intended to be revenue-neutral.
But until the financial ramifications of the various proposals are studied carefully, it is impossible to make the best and fairest decision, board members decided.
“We’re about to vote on something that we have no idea what it entails,” Mayor Privett said, as other board members nodded in agreement. “We need to research this.”
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