Sewer Rates

Hamilton County sewer rates are going up.

County residents will be paying higher sewer rates beginning next month.

News 12's joeli poole explains the reason for the increase.

The wastewater treatment authority or wwta has announced that sewer rates in hamilton county will increase by 12% beginning october 1st, 2020.

This increase comes as a result of various sewer projects that are needed across the county, in order to meet the environmental protections agency guidelines.

Officials say they have been in negotiations with the epa for the last five years and it's time to get something done.

Mike patrick "this past fiscal year meaning july 1- june 30th , 2019 we had just under 300 sanitary sewer overflows in our service area.

These overflows occur next to streams, in peoples front and back yards and sometimes in peoples houses.

This is not anything you want to happen in a modern society.we have been using piping that was installed decades ago and we are to the point where we have to rehabilitate this piping."

Officials say they have been working to enter a consent decree for hamilton county that will provide a legal settlement and a work plan that addresses the many sanitary sewer overflows that occur in the county each year.

The wwta says they expect the consent decree to last somewhere between the next 15 and 20 years but that they expect the majority of the work to be completed within the first 10.

Patrick "because of the nature of the projects , you can consider our consent decree to be somewhat front loaded.

We will spend estimated at least $140 million dollars in the first 10 years.

That really is the reason for the rather significant rate increase.

I'll agree this is a bad time for a rate increase.

There's no doubt about that with a pandemic especially.

However we still have to stop these overflows.

Overflows are illegal."

Officials say the combined cost for all of the projects is estimated to be around $240 million dollars and that the money will come from sewer rate payers.

Overall our viewers are not excited about this increase, leaving comments on our facebook post- "just what we need, a higher bill to pay" and "my sewer bill is already double what my water bill is.

This is the exact reason i am looking to move out of chattanooga."

Joeli poole "officials say that because hamilton county hasnt been in compliance with the federal water pollution control act for many years, this significant increase is necessary to accelerate the work plan and get the county into compliance with that federal act."

According to officials, a list of updated projects can be found on wwta's facebook page.

And our viewers can find a link to that page on our website, wdef dot com.

In hamilton county, joeli poole, news