MOUNT VERNON – Several Mount Vernon residents took the opportunity on Jan. 19 to quiz City leaders and staff about why the City says it needs a wastewater rate hike and why the system is in such disrepair.
Utilities Commission Chair and City Councilmember Tammy Woods scheduled the meeting to educate residents about its wastewater utility. The City also created a Wastewater Utility page on its website.
A 15% rate hike for three years has been proposed. The minimum average fee would rise from $19.80 per month to $29.80 in 2023. It initially included an automatic 10% rate hike for seven more years. But Woods said she plans to remove that provision.
Emily McKinley, a consultant with the City, described a dozen projects set to continue or begin in 2021 that the rate hike would help fund.
The big-ticket items are digester rehabilitation design-and-construction and phosphorous treatment. Mount Vernon is under a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandate to come into compliance within five years on phosphorous optimization and SSL elimination. But the clock started ticking on these mandates in 2019, and the estimated cost for both is $11 million.
“Currently, there are 219 miles of wastewater lines in the city. And a lot of those have completed their useful life cycle of about 100 years,” McKinley said.
Bruce Malek asked where the 42% rate hike went that was approved in 2017.
“We had about six months till we could not pay our bills,” Mathias Orndorf, public utilities director, said. “That’s what that rate increase went to. Our budget at the wastewater plant for maintenance was zero. We were in big trouble.”
Orndorf said funds were also used for an engineering study of the city’s digesters, which treat wastewater solids and produce biogas.
Josh Morrison wanted assurances that the city had a plan so these projects and other needs will be met.
“What’s next, because this can’t keep happening, we keep coming back and asking people for more and more money,” he said.
Orndorf said the Utilities Department needs to create a strategic plan like it did for the water system.
Kathryn Pullins asked if the rate hike could be delayed until local residents have recovered from the financial impact of the pandemic, which has many people struggling.
Amber Keener wants the City to present the percentages of where the proposed rate increase would be used. A lack of funds in the budget to make necessary repairs also troubled her. She said we want Mount Vernon to grow, but this system can’t support it.
“I’d kind of like some more information about how these improvements will go to also support the growth that’s coming to Mount Vernon,” she said.
