Hamilton County: Commissioners ask WWTA for explanation of fee

Hamilton County commissioners are asking for an explanation of a new $8 monthly charge for sewer customers, a fee that Commissioner Curtis Adams said the Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority used “bad judgment” in approving.

“I just want to make sure that they know we’re looking at it,” Mr. Adams said. “I think everybody ought to have somebody to answer to.”

But Cleveland Grimes, the water authority’s executive director, said they do have someone to answer to: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

“The WWTA is responsible for enforcing whatever regulations come down from EPA or TDEC,” he said.

Mr. Grimes said the fee comes from an order that affected Signal Mountain and environmental officials suggested be put in place for other parts of the county’s sewer system. The water authority’s board approved the fee May 7.

Residents and elected officials voiced opposition to the $8 fee during the Red Bank City Commission meeting Tuesday night.

In September 1996, the Tennessee Division of Water Quality Control ordered Red Bank to rehabilitate its leaking sewer system. Red Bank rate payers continue to pay for those mandated repairs even after having joined the WWTA, according to Mayor Joe Glasscock.

“The WWTA answers to nobody,” Mr. Glasscock said during a Red Bank City Commission meeting Tuesday night. “We should consider seceding.”

Red Bank’s manager Chris Dorsey and public works director Wayne Hamill will attend today’s WWTA board meeting to voice the commission’s displeasure and sense of being treated unfairly about the $8 fee. Red Bank residents already have $8.71 added each month to their sewer bill for repairs done before joining the WWTA.

“We were under a moratorium,” Red Bank Commissioner Monty Millard said. “We had no real choice.”

Soddy-Daisy Mayor Bob Privett, who represents his city on the WWTA board, said the newly adopted $8 fee will repair a system that if left as is will result in hefty fines levied by TDEC against the WWTA and halt adding any sewer service on the mountain.

“This charge will initially pay for Signal Mountain’s sewers, but every time a fine is imposed all the citizens pay for it,” Mr. Privett said. “This will save money in the long run because fines and treatment fees will go down — you pay on the amount of water that is treated.”

The fee is earmarked to improving lateral lines — those connecting buildings to main sewer lines — over the next 20 years and will be applied to about 24,000 customers using gravity sewers in Signal Mountain, Red Bank, Lookout Mountain and East Ridge.

“We thought this was the fairest way to do it,” Mr. Grimes said.

Commission Chairman Bill Hullander on Monday asked Mr. Adams and his Finance Committee to find out why the WWTA will be charging the fee. Mr. Adams then sent a letter Tuesday to WWTA Chairman Henry Hoss asking him to appear at the commission’s May 29 meeting at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. Hullander said residents have expressed concern about the fee, which would cost customers about $96 per year.

“We as commissioners would have liked to have had the courtesy of them briefing us,” he said.

Mr. Grimes said WWTA officials would have no problem discussing the fee with commissioners.

“We had a public hearing up on Signal Mountain,” he said. “It wouldn’t be any different.”

Mr. Hullander also asked if the fee would go toward a treatment plant in Meigs County that WWTA officials are hoping to operate soon.

The funding for that plant comes from a completely different source, Mr. Grimes said. He said the plant, though it is in Meigs County, would serve northern Hamilton County as well as southern Meigs County.