Customers of the Eatonton-Putnam Water and Sewer Authority (EPWSA) should expect a rate hike in the coming months.
However, with an eye on the number of its customers on fixed incomes, the EPWSA board indicated Monday that any rate hike would be linked to the Labor Department’s consumer price index (CPI) and not to the rising costs being experienced by EPWSA.
In other words, the coming rate hike would be no higher than the cost-of-living-adjustments on, say, January’s Social Security checks. Those particular COLAs are scheduled to rise by 8.7 percent.
“We should correlate it (any rate hike) with our most at-risk customers, not our costs,” stated Judd Doster, a city appointee to the board. Although there were some questions about alternatives, there seemed to be a consensus on the direction of their guidance for the upcoming budget deliberations. The actual setting of new rates will likely come next month.
Staff reports earlier in the meeting made it clear that EPWSA’s costs have been increasing during the past year, especially the cost of chemicals and repairs. In a year-to-date comparison through August in 2021 and 2022, ESG Operations manager Brice Doolittle told the board that chemicals were already over-budget by $29,000 and repairs by $25,000.
A particular longerrange problem has arisen with the disposal of “sludge,” the solids filtered out of the sewage system.
The problem starts with the inability to get all the moisture out of the sludge, which recently led to a landslide in one north Georgia regional landfill.
Disposal costs have risen from $23 a ton to $80 a ton at the large landfills operated by large private companies like Waste Management and Republic, ESG Operation Supervisor Neil Counts said.
“They don’t want your business,” said Counts.
“It’s becoming an issue across the industry.”
The discussion of sewer problems led to free-for-all accounts of unusual things that clog sewer lines, and they only start with out-of-sightout- of-mind cigar butts and diapers.
Recently in Eatonton, there was a football-sized chunk of asphalt half-way blocking a line. Counts said he pulled logs out of sewer lines, and Doolittle said that in his Augusta days he pulled a 24-foot by 8-foot roll of carpet that somebody had managed to get into a line. “I swear,” he said.