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Fewer flushes add up to higher bills
(by Dave Lange - November 29, 2010)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Fewer flushes add up to higher bills
Sewage treatment -- as I prefer to call the process of treating sewage -- is getting mighty expensive. The bureaucrats who'd rather call it waste-water enhancement or water reclamation may be to blame for skyrocketing costs.
Some people, perhaps those who whine incessantly about getting their country back, would be happy to return to the good old days when they could flush their toilets directly into the Chagrin and Cuyahoga rivers and other tributaries that flow into Lake Erie. That actually was occurring in the hills and ravines of Gates Mills until the late 1990s.
But, of course, private enterprise and the corporatist spirit that recently gave us the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico can be trusted to keep our Great Lake clean for walleye fishing, sailing, sunbathing and drinking -- just like it used to keep the Cuyahoga from catching on fire.
Speaking about the evils of big government, though, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District wants to proceed with a $3 billion, 25-year plan negotiated with the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice to reduce the amount of untreated sewage flowing into Lake Erie from 4.5 billion gallons a year now to less than 500 million gallons a year. Let's cut the crap. Twice that much was being spewed into the lake 20 years ago, but the environmental do-gooders are never satisfied.
Needless to say, they want the poor citizens, who just want to poop in peace, to pay for this government intrusion. If they get their way, the average bill for the sewer district's 330,000 customers will increase from under $40 a month now to $140 by 2035.
Meanwhile, the City of Solon, which operates its own sewage-treatment plant, is planning to raise the rates by 9 percent next year. That averages out to a whopping increase of $3.33 per month, which one city councilman had the gall to describe as "very reasonable." Solon residents can thank the EPA for that, since millions of dollars in upgrades have been mandated for the plant in recent years.
Defying the law of supply and demand, which some people believe was brought down from Mount Sinai or at least written into the Constitution, the government of Solon expects the bodily functioning public to believe that, since demand for sewage treatment is down, the costs must go up. This is based on some cockamamie manifesto that, even though people are flushing and draining less than they used to, operating that fancy water-reclamation facility isn't getting any cheaper. Privatization is the obvious answer.
Out in Burton Village, where they're facing a similar situation in which too few customers have to bear the cost burdens of sewage treatment, plus a water system, at least one official is thinking outside the privy. Curt Johnson, who is a member of the village planning commission and the board of public affairs, said the answer to a proposed 73 percent rate increase just might be a change in residential zoning that would allow smaller lots. Voila! More houses would mean more customers and lower utility rates.
That may not go over so well in Solon, where citizens are demanding that the government prevent a private enterprise from building three duplexes on property where current zoning permits just two single-family homes.
Citizens who just want the government to butt out of their sewage altogether could join in a new movement called the pee party.
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