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Youngstown mayor wants EPA to reduce city’s sewer improvement expense
YOUNGSTOWN
Mayor Jamael Tito Brown said he wants to ask the federal Environmental Protection Agency to reduce a $160 million commitment Youngstown made to upgrade its sewer system and possibly give the city more time to pay for the work.
Brown remains adamant he won’t recommend a sewer-rate increase until meeting with the federal and state EPAs to discuss those issues.
“We need to exhaust all of our options,” he said. “Maybe they give us a stop gap. Some cities have received some years off to rebuild its cash.”
Councilman T.J. Rodgers, D-2nd, said the city is just “delaying the inevitable. But you never know when a Hail Mary will come through and we won’t have to raise [the rate] as much. We’re trying all our options.”
Arcadis, an international firm hired by the city for a sewer-rate study, recommended it be increased 8 percent a year for five years, starting Jan. 1.
That would generate about $76.5 million for improvements to the wastewater treatment plant that have already been finished, are under construction or the work will shortly be awarded.
Much of that money for those projects has been borrowed from the state EPA. Brown said city officials haven’t been contacted by the state agency with concerns that a delay in a rate increase would impact Youngstown’s ability to pay back the money.
When asked how the city could avoid paying for already-completed projects, Brown said he didn’t know, but he wants to try.
Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th, chairman of the public utilities committee, said he plans to have a meeting next month to talk with Arcadis officials about making a rate increase more affordable for residents.
“We’re not in an easy situation, but I’m very mindful of the amount of a rate increase,” he said.
Ray said after an affordability report, the city should consider a rate increase in 2019 and then evaluate it annually.
Councilwoman Anita Davis, D-6th, said, “We have to raise the rates. I don’t want to see them raised at 8 percent. I’d like to see it done at a reduced rate of 4 percent. Also, we should look at a rate increase year by year rather than lock in at five years.”
The Arcadis study’s recommendations called for the monthly sewer rate to go from $98.91 per 1,000 cubic feet now to $106.82 in 2019, $115.37 in 2020, $124.60 in 2021, $134.57 in 2022 and $145.33 in 2023. There are about 22,000 wastewater accounts in the city.
After close to a decade of negotiations with the federal EPA, the city and the agency settled in 2014 on about $160 million in sewer improvements over 20 years.
The projects are upgrades to the treatment plant as well as a new facility near the plant to better control sewage in heavier rainfalls and an interceptor to keep wastewater from flowing into Mill Creek.