NASHVILLE - It's been said that a looming execution concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Today might be the day for the Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority to see whether that's true.
Inundated by complaints over the authority's operations, two local lawmakers are proposing to put WWTA under the same legislative "sunset" review as state agencies - a move that could end its existence on July 1, 2019, and hand over its functions to Hamilton County government.
The intent, said sponsor Bo Watson, the speaker pro tempore of the Tennessee Senate, is "to get us to start thinking about, do we need to have another structure than what we currently have? It also creates a sense of urgency for the wastewater authority to say, 'Hey, we got to start working through these problems that we have.'"
WWTA's litany of woes includes a disruption to customer billing that has hurt its finances as well as expensive state and federal clean water orders to prevent raw sewage from flowing into the Tennessee River, the source of many residents' drinking water, during heavy rains.
Some WWTA customers also are irate over lateral sewer line issues and other matters. And along with angry plumbers and some business owners, they have been venting their frustrations for weeks in meetings organized by Hamilton County Commissioner Tim Boyd of East Ridge.
"They've been having a lot of these pitchfork and lantern rallies against WWTA," said Rep. Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah, the House sponsor of the sunset bill. "And I'm getting a lot of calls."
WWTA was created to serve the unincorporated areas of Hamilton County and, over the years, has extended operations to East Ridge, Red Bank, Signal Mountain, Lookout Mountain, Soddy-Daisy, Ridgeside and Lakesite. Chattanooga has its own sewer authority.
Watson, a Hixson Republican, said the state law that allowed WWTA to begin operations in 1994 gave the county mayor power to appoint its five-member board. But the mayor has no direct control over the agency, Watson said.
If WWTA were placed under legislative sunset review, the state comptroller's office would conduct a performance audit to see how well it was fulfilling its responsibilities. WWTA officials also would have to come before a legislative panel to discuss solutions, with its very existence at stake.
An attorney who once did legal work for Hamilton County and WWTA, Carter said sewer operations "worked pretty doggone good" when WWTA's mission only involved serving unincorporated areas of Hamilton County.
And he thinks serving the unincorporated areas should once again be the county's role.
"I think with the current tenor and extent of the dissent against WWTA with the cities that it serves, I think you'll see it go out of business in 2019," Carter said. "What I want to signal to them is that this is not a ploy, this is not a gimmick.
"Let's get together, let's make our plans," Carter added. "Cities rightfully believe that they can administer to their needs better than another bureau can. They want to make those decisions locally, within each city, and I applaud them in that. And I'll support them in that."
Asked whether elected officials in East Ridge, Red Bank, Signal Mountain and Soddy-Daisy had told him they're interested in taking back sewer operations from the WWTA, Carter said they had not.
And state Rep. Marc Gravitt, who is vice mayor of East Ridge, doesn't think the cities want the responsibility.
WWTA owes the state about $10 million in no- or low-interest loans to help address its environmental problems. A note in the Carter/Watson bill said if WWTA went out of business in 2019, about $6 million of that money won't have been repaid. In that case, the state would come after the money from the municipal governments.
The authority also has other obligations on bonds issued through county government.
"I think that would create a large financial burden" on the towns and cities, said Gravitt, who added he's heard Gov. Bill Haslam's administration opposes the bill.
Gravitt noted WWTA has "consumed an enormous amount" of his time this legislative session in arranging meetings with sewer authority officials and others to find solutions.
WWTA Executive Director Cleveland Grimes also said no city officials have asked for their sewer systems back.
"I think its more of just trying to collect the revenue," Grimes said.
Gravitt is the House sponsor of another Watson bill on the Senate floor today related to WWTA.
This one would stop the agency from hitting up third parties, such as property owners and subsequent tenants, when renters walk out on their bills.
That's been a huge problem for the sewer authority since late 2012, when investor-owned Tennessee American Water, which supplies water to a good portion of the WWTA's service area as well as Chattanooga, decided to drop decades of joint billing for water and sewer services from its monthly bills.
The sewer authority's revenues plummeted. WWTA officials scrambled, hiring an out-of-state company to begin billing customers separately for sewer charges. Some customers, used to seeing sewer charges on their water bills, refused to pay, thinking it was a "scam," Carter said.
Others just didn't pay. And WWTA officials complained it was hard to compel them to do so.
"Once Tennessee American decoupled, this is a different ball game," Grimes said.
Tennessee American balked at pressure from WWTA to turn off water for people who didn't pay sewer charges. Two years ago, Carter and Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, introduced legislation to make Tennessee American resume joint billing. The lawmakers said that brought the water company to the table and spurred better cooperation in turning off water service to nonpaying sewer customers.
But WWTA officials now want Tennessee American to send would-be water customers first to WWTA so the sewer authority could collect deposits against unpaid bills.
Tennessee American officials say it can't be done with their existing software. Getting a process up and running would cost money and mean hiring new personnel. That would land the water company before state regulators, something Tennessee American, owned by publicly traded American Water, is loath to do.
This second bill would block WWTA officials from trying to collect unpaid sewer fees from third-parties such as building owners or new tenants. In exchange, the bill allows WWTA to make customers pay an advance deposit for sewer services.
Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger acknowledges hearing complaints, but also believes "there's frankly a lot of misinformation about WWTA. Because usually when I follow up on it there's a logical explanation for what is really occurring."
He said he's been following the legislative action, particularly the Watson/Gravitt bill allowing the sewer authority to require up-front deposits, and has spoken with local lawmakers about what he sees as the authority's problem.
"Any operation, whether government or private, you have to have a certain amount of revenues to even keep the program going," Coppinger said.
As a result of Tennessee American's decision to stop billing for sewer charges, "[WWTA] didn't have a choice" about starting to do its own billing.
So the question becomes, "How does WWTA collect the fees?"
"If you can't put some mechanism in place to collect the money that's owed by the people who owe it, then what's going to happen is what none of us want to see, which is rates have to increase," Coppinger warned. "Because you still have to have that certain amount of expenditures and bond obligations. Real simple math."
Grimes said the authority has worked to raise the share of customers paying bills. It's back up to about 90 percent systemwide, he said.
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com, 615-255-0550 or follow via twitter at AndySher1.