Two Kanawha County cities are looking to raise their sewage fees so that they can comply with federal standards.
On Feb. 4, the South Charleston City Council passed an ordinance to nearly triple the city sanitary fees. Then, a week later, the town of Belle held a public meeting about a proposal to raise fees to $40.12 by July 2017.
Both cities require major upgrades to their sanitary systems.
In Belle, the sanitation plant is falling apart. Metal surrounding the pump is corroding and it's a few years away from being inoperable.
"It's just unsafe," Belle Mayor Buck Chestnut said. "The operation right now is becoming unsafe because of the condition of these things."
The town was given a new facility for free, but it still will need to pay $5 million to build the new plant.
Belle received a grant for $3 million eight years ago, but because it didn't get a property in time, now the town is only getting $1 million that the federal grant promised.
That leaves the town scrambling for other ways to make up the money. It will take out an interest-free loan for the $4 million it needs, but in order to pay back the loan, the sanitary fees have to increase.
"We've been forced to make this decision because of the people who regulate this treatment plant," Chestnut said.
The town council tabled the increased sanitary fees at its meeting Thursday in hopes that it can have its waste water treated at the Kanawha County treatment plant in Chelyan.
If the town doesn't get a new treatment plant up and running soon, it could see major fines from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Water Act.
South Charleston faces an even bigger burden - $80 million in upgrades over the next 20 years.
South Charleston's biggest project is to prevent storm water from mixing with the waste water.
Normally, waste water and storm water go to different places. Ideally, the storm water would just drain off into the river, but if storm water ends up in the waste water stream, it can overflow the system, pushing wastewater into the Kanawha River.
To fix the problem, the sanitary board will have to go around the city and identify all the places where storm water is getting into the waste system. Then, it'll have to pay to fix those areas.
Fixing the stream problem is only the first step. After that, the city will need new storage containers. However, if the city doesn't fix the crossing of streams first, estimates for the size of the storage containers would be off, wasting money.
"We're not doing this to benefit ourselves," said Steve DeBarr, South Charleston Sanitary Board manager and city engineer. "We're doing this to comply with the law."
Belle has a similar problem, but plans on resolving it by charging people who are draining their storm water into the waste system about $5 dollars on their bill.
Belle has raised its sanitary fees recently, but this will be the first time South Charleston has raised its fees since 2006.
"Nobody is doing this stuff because they think it's fun," South Charleston Mayor Frank Mullens said.
South Charleston currently has the lowest fees at $7.32 per 2,000 gallons. By raising the minimum fee to $20.74, and an extra $11.30 for every 1,000 gallons on top of that, it'll go from having the lowest sanitary fees in Kanawha County to the fourth lowest.
Belle has the sixth highest fees in the county.
Reach Daniel Desrochers at
dan.desrochers@wvgazettemail.com,
304-348-4886 or follow
@drdesrochers on Twitter.