STEUBENVILLE -- A sewage rate hike has some Jefferson County residents up in arms, but county officials say they didn't have a choice.
In June, the Jefferson County Water and Sewer Service District began charging customers a $7 per month infrastructure fee. Anyone exceeding the 2,000 gallon minimum also is being charged an overage of $10 per 1,000 gallons. The rate increase showed up on July bills.
Director Mike Eroshevich said the money is needed to cover a $300,000 a year budget shortfall, one he blames largely on the $32 million in Ohio EPA-mandated system upgrades that have been made since 2012. He said soaring inflation and the fees Jefferson County must pay to treat sewage from some of its collection areas also feed into the department's 47 percent increase in annual operating costs during the past four years.
Eroshevich said the sewer department's "used all the reserves we had in the bank" and commissioners had to divert more than $600,000 in tax revenue to cover loan payments in 2024 "because our department didn't have the money to pay it."
"The sewer department has operated at a deficit for the past three years," Eroshevich said. "The last significant rate increase was in 2009. We did reduce the allowed (usage) under the minimum charges from 3,000 gallons to 2,000 gallons, and in 2022 there was a 3 percent increase (about $1 per customer) to the minimum bill."
He said before last month's rate hike the department was projected to bring in $2.2 million, "but our current debt service loan payments are $956,000 annually. "So 43 percent of our revenue is paying for previous loans."
"That leaves only 57 percent of our revenue for all other operating expenses," Eroshevich said. "We have 43 sites (where we have to) pay electric bills, which is around $19,000 to $20,000 a month, or $228,000 annually, just for electricity. Our sewer expenses include labor, hospitalization, retirement, fuel generators, services, repairs and materials, including lab testing supplies. We also send out samples to a laboratory for eight plants that have to be tested. It pays for engineering, phones, internet (service) and sludge removal, and we pay Wintersville, Mingo Junction and Steubenville to treat sewage from some of our areas."
He said the county is in negotiations with Wintersville for a new water and sewer contract, "and they're more than doubling the rate that they charge us, so we'll actually be paying more to treat the sewage than we're charging our customers."
Eroshevich also pointed out the county has already been forced to take on four of what he calls "package plants" -- small sewage treatment plants built by developers so they could parcel off small, 35-to-40-house subdivisions. "They let them get into disrepair and then the EPA made the county take them over because we provide the water," he said. "So, we had to take over these four package plants spread throughout the county -- the cost to replace those is $2 million apiece but they only have 35 or 40 customers attached to each of them, so you can see the economics of that."
Arcadis's Andrew Dawson, the county's engineering consultant, pointed out neither Eroshevich nor the commissioners had much choice with the massive system upgrades they've done during the past 13 years.
"Those projects were not just things (where they) looked at a list and picked from," he said. "Those were things that the Ohio EPA said (had to be fixed.) They say, 'Either you pay money to fix this plant or you pay us money in fines and violations ..."
Eroshevich said George's Run residents are especially unhappy "because their costs more than doubled."
"But they've been paying less than half than the rest of the people for the last decade," he added, explaining that when the system was built more than 30 years ago, the county allowed low- and moderate-income residents to pay their tap in fee over 20 years. During that 20-year period those residents paid less than customers in other parts of Jefferson County. In 2013 he said his predecessor notified George's Run residents that since their assessment expired, they were going to be charged the same rate other county customers were paying. She was forced to rescind that notice, he said, pointing out the minimum bill for George's Run customers in 2024 was $22.40 a month compared to the minimum bill of $46.09 a month customers in other areas paid for sewage treatment during the same period.
"People think because we're small and rural, that our costs should be lower than they would be in a big city," he said. "But it's actually the opposite: We're so spread out with such a low customer base, it's actually more expensive because we have so much infrastructure that we have to repair, replace and maintain. We have the same number of customers that, say, the city of Steubenville has (but) they have one sewer plant. We have eight. I realize theirs is a lot bigger, but ours are spread out all over the county."
Commissioner Tony Morelli said they're "hearing it" from customers throughout the county, "but our system has tremendous costs due to how spread out it is. It takes more pipes, more pumps and valves, more lift stations -- you name it." He also pointed out residents of George's Run -- where minimum billings are half what customers pay elsewhere in the county -- have the "largest amount of delinquency."
"We're installing a new meter soon to make sure gallons are correct," he said. "But we need to start getting this money or take a drastic step. Water and sewer have to be self-sustaining. I will never again vote to pay the bills out of a special fund, like the $600,000 we did last year."
Faced with the reality of mounting red ink and tighter budgets, Commissioner Jake Kleineke said they "didn't really have a choice."
"Previous commissioners never did the small, incremental raises, frankly so they could be re-elected," he said. "They didn't want to make anybody mad, that's really the truth of the matter there. And we didn't do maintenance on the system because we didn't have the money: People need to understand, we have 65,000 residents in the county but only about 3,500 (of them) are on sewage systems. When you have a system that's running in the red, basically the people who have sewage, because they're living in rural areas and are so spread out, are being subsidized by the people who don't have it (and) it's not fair."
He pointed out they didn't have a choice when it came to taking on failing water and sewer systems throughout the county, either. "The systems were dictated to be installed by EPA," he said. "The cost incurred by customers was for their hookup."
And having to negotiate with municipalities for sewage treatment isn't helping the situation: The George's Run and Commercial Avenue system, for instance, belongs to the county but the water distributed to those residents is supplied by Mingo Junction.
"Two hundred households or thereabout use that system," Kleineke said. "That should equate to roughly 500,000 gallons of sewage a month, but what we're experiencing is 1.5 million gallons a month. On top of that, we're sending bills to those same customers for roughly $3,500-$3,700 a month but we're paying Mingo Junction $8,500-$8,700 a month, so we're looking at a $4,500 a month deficit in just sewage collection in just one small area of county. How long can we do that and not raise rates? And that's just one example of issues with several segments of the system that we're dealing with."
Plus, because Mingo Junction controls the flow of water to those households, not JCWSD, the county can't just shut off water service to households in that area that choose not to pay their sewage bills.
"I've said to customers, the only choice we have is to raise the rates so we can afford to process the material or we privatize it to someone and if we privatize it, we have no control of it, they could raise prices or whatever, so it's not a win-win, it's a lose-lose," he said.
Kleineke said he understands their customers' frustrations, as do Morelli and Commissioner Eric Timmons.
"We sympathize with them," he said. "This is not what any of us wanted to do, it's not like we looked forward to this. We worked for months and months, trying to find a better way to do it. We just want them to know they are being heard, we're reading their letters and we are looking for ways to fix the situation. All of us are concerned, but we can't keep dipping into we need for operations to keep the sewer system alive because of the operating deficit."