Commissioner Tim Boyd publishes WWTA report

Commissioners Tim Boyd and Joe Graham
Commissioners Tim Boyd and Joe Graham

Commissioner Tim Boyd, a long-time critic of Hamilton County's Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority, has published a 57-page report on the agency.

"This report, I hope, is a report that can be used constructively in the reorganization of the WWTA by the mayor and whatever committee he puts together," Boyd said as he distributed copies "WWTA: A Great Vision Gone Astray" during today's county commission meeting.

Recent state legislation has set a sunset date of 2021 for the agency, which owns and operates the public sewer system in the unincorporated areas of Hamilton County and the municipalities of East Ridge, Lakesite, Lookout Mountain, Red Bank, Ridgeside, Signal Mountain and Soddy Daisy.

Anyone who reads the report, which includes six stories documenting residents' frustrations with the agency, should conclude WWTA is "in dire need of reorganization and policy changes," Boyd said.

The report says that Boyd has received many WWTA complaints from his East Ridge constituents and he received more when he conducted community meetings about WWTA across Hamilton County over the last year.

The report immediately drew fire from Commissioner Greg Beck and Mayor Jim Coppinger for its criticisms of WWTA Director Cleveland Grimes, who died in March.

"There was some problems in the past, but there are much better, diplomatic ways of discussing the WWTA without rehashing old problems or criticizing dead people," Beck said. "If that's Christianity, let me off the wagon."

Boyd said he did not author the negative comments, but only recorded them as part of constituents' stories "verbatim" and with "pain and effort to be sensitive to the fact he's no longer here."

Coppinger praised Grimes for his work and said he liked to look at the positive sides to WWTA, noting that none of the good stories about the organization readily make the news.

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