From Allen Dinkel, City Manager
When I first became City Manager here over 8 years, we continued with the weekly report we call the 5/15 Report. The purpose of the report at the time was to let the Governing Body know what was all “happening” in the City. Over the years this report has changed, and we now send the report to a number of people who request it and recently my portion of the report has been disseminated by the local media. I have changed my portion of the report over time to the point where I try to inform abut City issues or topics that are related to City Government. I used to do a weekly column in a “former life”, so I enjoy doing it this way.
We are going to continue to discuss more about the various City owned Utilities and this week begin with more on the wastewater or sanitary sewer division. I did find out last week that someone reads what I write as I received a question about regarding the wastewater utility. I told him he was a week ahead and I planned to cover that portion this week.
His question dealt with how wastewater rates are calculated. Last week I wrote about the improvements being made at the two sewer plants and this week the City Commission approved the low bid of more than $56 million to serve as contractor for the Phase II project. On top of that, engineering fees for the work that was done in design engineering and in the upcoming months for construction engineering and inspection are near the $9 million mark. We all can agree that is a lot of money and yes, the rates for that service come into play. In addition, funds are needed to do maintenance on older lines and manholes throughout the community.
Basically, wastewater or sewer rates are based on the amount of water that a resident or a business uses each month. That is based on the fact that most of the water that enters into the sewer collection system and then to the plants comes from water that is purchased from the City. So, for every gallon of water that is used, a gallon is also charged on the waste water side as well.
Now before you get excited and say “Hey Allen, that is not fair as I water my lawn, so I have an attractive home in the community. This helps City look like a more attractive place to live and work in” there is more to the “Rest of the Story”. Remember, I as well have a large lawn and yes, I do irrigate it as well. For residential customers the wastewater charge is set each April and remains at the same amount for the next 12 months. This rate is based on the average number of gallons of water used during the 3 previous winter months. We can all agree all of the water used in the winter goes to the sewer plants. So, whatever your rate is in April it will be the same for the next 12 months. Nearly every City utilizes a similar system for residential accounts.
So, what happens to someone that is a new resident of Junction City? As you know that occurs quite often here in Junction City. That person or family has no water use to base the waste water rate on. In that case that account will be billed at the average amount of a residential customer that lives here. At the present time that is $56.17 per month. It will remain that amount until the next April and then it is recalculated on actual water usage for the 3 winter months.
Commercial customers rates are based on the actual amount of water used each month. Now there are some businesses who have a separate meter for irrigation. In that case that meter is not subject to wastewater charges, but the other meters for water in the building is.
The rate structure itself for all customers, residential or commercial and industrial, is the same. The base or minimum charge for any customer is $37.64 per month. Then a volumetric rate is charge based on water usage. That rate is 47 cents per 100 gallons. So, let’s do the math for a customer that used 5,000 gallons of water. Divide the 5K by 100 and you get 50. Multiply that by $.47 and that equals $23.50. Add that and the $37.64 and your bill will total $61.14. Remember, I said above the average residential amount in Junction is 56.17 so the average residential consumption of water per month during those 3 winter months is about 3,950 gallons. There is an old rule of thumb that water use per person per day is 50 gallons. So, in a 4-person household it is 4 x 50 x 30 days and that will bring you to 6,000 gallons per month per household. Of course, that is just an estimate so every household will vary some. When Paula and I had 2 daughters in sports in High school along with our youngest who was in pre-school, our average usage per person exceeded the 50 gallons per day.
Rates for commercial customers is the same but based on actual water use. We do have a few industrial customers where they are charge extra if they have a measure of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) or Total Suspended Solids (TSS). I am not going to go over the science, but these fees are added due to the quality of water the sewage plants will have to handle.
We have to remember we just to have only sewage go into the sewer system. So, we attempt to keep stormwater out of the wastewater system. There is no need to have those extra gallons enter the sewer plant. Remember are sewer mains are not a “closed system” as there are “entries” at every manhole. As with many other cities, we need to continue to address the manholesand other infrastructure, especially the older areas in the City.
No doubt wastewater is not real “glamorous”, but a very important component in the infrastructure of any City.