CHJA talks plant upgrades following halt on sewer rate increase
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Canonsburg-Houston Joint Authority plans to save $10 million on its plant expansion project by switching its sewage treatment process from these 20-year-old biotowers, which would need to be replaced, to sequential batch reactors.
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
In this photo from June, Daryl Campbell, working foreman of the Canonsburg-Houston Joint Authority sewage treatment plant, stands near new primary clarifiers, which were part of phase one of the plant’s expansion project.
Canonsburg-Houston Joint Authority board members answered questions Thursday night from representatives of Houston and Canonsburg boroughs about sewer plant upgrades and a recent halt on rate increases.
“You had to anticipate, with the rate increase being as much as it is, there would be a howl,” said Nick Galbraith, a Houston councilman, during the meeting at Canonsburg’s municipal building.
A county judge Wednesday granted a temporary injunction to block the sewer rate increase, which would have gone from $5.39 per 1,000 gallons to $11.57, starting in July and affecting about 16,000 customers. The three townships served by the CHJA – Cecil, Chartiers and North Strabane – and their municipal authorities had sought the injunction, asking for time to review the necessity of the rate increase. A hearing was scheduled for July 11 to determine if the injunction will remain in effect.
“I don’t believe that the facts that were portrayed by the opposing parties were accurate,” CHJA solicitor Gary Matta said of Wednesday’s court proceedings. “If the judge looks at the facts of this case, we’ve done everything that is appropriate.”
Matta told the audience Thursday that the rate increase is necessary to make upgrades and expansions to the sewage treatment plant, which was built in 1960.
“You can’t even get parts for some of it anymore,” he said.
He said the injunction is only going to cause project costs to go up, as well as rates. CHJA was supposed to close on a $20 million bond May 30, but it was postponed due to litigation. Matta said CHJA’s bond debt could increase by over $1 million.
He said that because of the injunction, “we are not implementing the rate increase, which is going to be extremely detrimental to the ratepayers in this area if it continues.”
“They’re all rate-payers here, as well,” Matta said about the CHJA board members. “They don’t get anything for being on this board. We tried to be as transparent as possible. Our rates are still in the bottom end of what other municipalities have.”
CHJA’s engineer, Craig Bauer of KLH Engineers, also told board members Thursday that the plant is past its lifespan.
“That plant served you well, but it’s beyond its time,” he said.
Daryl Campbell, working foreman of the plant, said the first phase of the $59 million project includes upgrades, while the second phase is to increase capacity. He said the plant is dated enough that some of the eight full-time employees manually rake out road sediment, “organic materials,” garbage and other items people flush down their toilets. New bar screens and upgrades to the system’s “grit unit” will eliminate that manual process.
When the project began, between 2007 and 2009, the state Department of Environmental Protection mandated that CHJA upgrade its wastewater treatment plant to meet the expected growth in its service areas. The DEP required the plant to increase flow capacity from 3 million to 8.4 million gallons per day.
Campbell said that in 1984, the average daily flow at the plant was about 800,000 gallons. Now, he said, it’s about 3.5 million gallons.
“Every year, our flow goes up a lot,” he said. “All of the building that’s been going on since I started here, I attribute a lot of that to the outlying communities.”
Campbell said the injunction has not stopped construction and planning from continuing at the plant. He said they have enough money to get through the engineering of phase two of the project, but not enough to complete its construction.
“We’re still moving forward,” he said “The first phase should be done and online by September, I hope.”
As initially planned in 2009, the project was estimated to cost $41.9 million. After some issues with the electrical engineering early on in the project, delays due to becoming its own operating board and project cost overruns, CHJA borrowed $52 million through bonds in 2016. It raised its rates at the end of that year.
In January, CHJA held a meeting, during which representatives of the municipalities were asked to sign off on a design change in the project that would save $10 million. During that meeting, the municipal officials also were informed that there would be additional borrowing to cover cost overruns, which were beyond the $10 million that was hoped to be saved, according to representatives of Cecil, North Strabane and Chartiers townships.
The townships recently requested documentation of how the bond money has been spent so far, along with justification for the rate increases.
Both Jodi Noble, Chartiers Township manager, and Greg Gennuso, administrator for Cecil Township’s Municipal Authority, said the numbers they were getting from CHJA didn’t add up.
On Tuesday, North Strabane Township approved sharing the cost of hiring Lennon Smith of Souleret Engineering to review CHJA’s plant designs on behalf of the three townships and the two municipal authorities. The supervisors also approved advertising a “board to board” meeting July 17 with Canonsburg Borough Council to discuss issues involving CHJA.