Representatives of the Hamilton County Water & Wastewater Treatment Authority got an earful Wednesday from county commissioners and local plumbers about the authority’s program to test and repair sewer lines.
At the commission meeting, WWTA officials said they may hire a general contractor to help test and repair sewer lines so the authority can meet its quota of 300 lines a month. The WWTA now tests and repairs about 60 lines a month.
But some plumbers at the meeting complained that the WWTA program uses contractors who compete with the plumbers, taking away possible business. They also said the contract plumbers aren’t getting paid fast enough.
Commissioner Fred Skillern repeatedly said the WWTA was inching toward “socialism” because customers are calling the authority to fix sewer line problems instead of calling plumbers directly.
Skillern said WWTA is making “house calls” when it sends a contract plumber to fix a problem phoned in by a resident.
WWTA serves the county’s unincorporated areas and the cities of East Ridge, Lakesite, Lookout Mountain, Red Bank, Ridgeside, Signal Mountain and Soddy-Daisy.
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation required WWTA to develop a corrective action plan for all its customers.
WWTA customers pay $8 a month per residential unit for the repair and maintenance program.
The cost to repair each line is between $3,000 and $5,000.
Plumbers who spoke at the meeting said WWTA sometimes takes months to pay them for work.
Chattanooga Roto-Rooter President Bill Foxworth said WWTA has effectively stolen business from him.
“These people are out of control,” he told commissioners. “They’ve been out of control.”
Cleveland Grimes, the WWTA executive director, said plumbers are welcome to become contractors in the agency’s Private Service Lateral Program.
“PSLP is an open program,” Grimes added. “Any plumber can apply.”
Foxworth said WWTA owed him about $33,000 when he was removed from the program over a money dispute.
Grimes said Foxworth owed about $300 in inspection fees and that WWTA has paid all properly submitted invoices.
Gene Shipley, a Soddy-Daisy commissioner who owns a plumbing company, said he’s heard of other plumbers waiting as long as four months to get paid for their work. He said 27 plumbers initially started in the program, but now he believes there are fewer than the 16 that Grimes quoted to commissioners.
“We need the work,” Shipley said, saying that companies are having to employ secretaries to handle all the paperwork.
Grimes said WWTA officials also are able to help with the paperwork.
“We’ve made ourselves available,” he said. “We’re still doing that.”
Grimes and Louis Wright, the county finance administrator who is also a WWTA commissioner, also spoke about the need to find more funding for the program.
Wright said the $8 per unit fee isn’t enough to pay for the program.
WWTA began the program in February 2010, and Grimes said 694 homes out of 1,253 homes in Signal Mountain have been evaluated. Signal Mountain is under a building moratorium because of the deficiencies in its sewer system.
Countywide, the WWTA program fixed 613 residential sewer lines “on an emergency basis,” he said. The program is expected to take seven to eight years and will reach an estimated 24,000 homeowners. It is expected to cost $45 million over that timeframe.
Wright said if WWTA had charged $20 to $22 instead of $8 original fee, it would not need to consider borrowing more money. But he said a 30-year bond issue would cost the WWTA $15.8 million in interest. The principal of the bond issue would be about $15 million.
Commission Chairman Larry Henry said he was worried the $8 fee could go up.
“There’s always the possibility that could be increased at some point,” Grimes said.