Commission to offer incentive for wastewater system

Commissioners unanimously voted to approve temporary waiver for sewer connections for 12 months at Thursdays regular city commission meeting.

The waiver would give residents who arent connected the sewer mains the chance to connect without the fees for a residential sewer tap and fees for road bores or road cuts until Aug. 31, 2015.

This is an excellent opportunity for people whove been on the fence and having problems with their septic system, Public Works Director J.C. Hughes said. This is an excellent opportunity that youre seldom going to get to cut costs tremendously.

New customers will still be responsible for paying to install piping on their property and installing a sewer clean-out at the property line.

In the past nine years, the water and utilities department has opened 603 sewer service connections to residents since they started their service line extension program. However, only 41 percent of new sewer connections were made by residents in extended areas.

The previous cost for new customers to connect to sanitary sewer lines were $500 for tap fees and $250 for road bores. Hughes said the cost had turned a lot of residents from connecting.

We receive many calls each year from residents interested in connecting to our sewer system, but we seldom hear back from them once they hear the up-front costs of the tap and bore fees, he said.

The waiver incentive is open to all residential customers for a single home location but doesnt apply to multi-family, commercial or industrial locations and only applies to new sewer connections.

Hughes added that he strongly encouraged resident to connect to their sewer system for health reasons.

One other major issue related to us strongly encouraging residents to connect to our sanitary sewer system has to do with the health and safety of residents and their neighbors, he said. Unsanitary conditions can lead to development of coliform bacteria or other environmental pathogens which could transmit, generate, or promote communicable diseases.

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Commission to offer incentive for wastewater system