Hamilton County’s sewer authority is fixing less than 20 percent of the leaking sewer lines it needs to repair to meet state regulatory requirements.
To expedite needed repairs on Signal Mountain and in other problem areas, members of the Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority voted Thursday to hire more staff while the county also pursues a low-interest state loan to help pay for needed work on aging pipes and sewer lines.
On Feb. 17, authority members also will consider whether to adjust what it pays plumbers to test, repair or replace sewer lines in much of the county outside Chattanooga.
WWTA Executive Director Cleveland Grimes said the county agency is completing an average of 58 homes a month through its private service lateral program, but that’s only 19.3 percent of the 300 homes a month the agency needs to complete to meet its state commitments.
Because of delays in bill payments and project approvals by local plumbers — and what plumbers claim are inadequate payments for gravel fill and dirt removal — the number of local plumbers working with the WWTA has dropped from 27 to 16.
Grimes recommended that the WWTA hire two more employees and convert a part-time job to full-time status to better handle scheduling and bill paying for local plumbers.
Gino Shipley, a Soddy-Daisy commissioner and owner of Shipley Plumbing, said adding staff should help expedite payments to plumbers.
“This is going to help tremendously with the paperwork and getting our money on time,” Shipley said. “But we still need to be paid more.”
The WWTA adopted an $8 monthly fee on all of its customers in 2009 to pay for the line tests and upgrades. But WWTA Commissioner Louis Wright, the county’s finance director, said more money likely will be needed in future years.
The WWTA launched a pilot program last year to test and upgrade sewers on Signal Mountain, where a building moratorium is in place because of widespread problems with leaking sewer lines. WWTA has pledged to the state to complete line tests and upgrades on all 24,000 homes served by WWTA within eight years.
Wright said the county is seeking a low-interest loan through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, administered by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. Without such a loan, the WWTA may have to raise fees again to meet its commitments to the state to limit the amount of infiltration and inflow into sewer lines during heavy rains.
TDEC spokesman Tisha Calabrese-Benton said Hamilton County’s sewer rehabilitation project “is in the funding zone” for such a loan, but TDEC is waiting on additional engineering reports from the county.
Richard Urban, head of the Chattanooga district office for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, told WWTA members that sewer systems must be upgraded to avoid repeated overflows into the Tennessee River at Chattanooga’s Moccasin Bend Sewage Treatment Plant and the WWTA’s Signal Mountain Treatment Plant. The WWTA plant alone had 131 illegal sewage bypasses from 2005 through 2007, WWTA records show.
“This situation is going to have to be addressed by all parties, including the satellite areas around Chattanooga,” Urban said.