Westmoreland Fayette sewage authority might scale back project

With the intermunicipal agreement a stumbling block to beginning work in a new treatment plant project, Westmoreland Fayette Municipal Sewage Authority officials said they might have to consider scaling down the project.

East Huntingdon and Upper Tyrone townships have signed the most recent agreement written by the authority's solicitor, Don Snyder. Everson and Scottdale borough officials are still holding out, even though the authority has agreed to take over the boroughs' sewage lines.

The authority has a working agreement with Scottdale and Everson and a partial agreement with East Huntingdon. Officials believe it would be good to bring as many customers into the system as possible while planning a project to build a sewage treatment plant. That would help spread the cost of the project over a larger customer base.

The authority provided for nearly 600 new customers in its project plans. These included customers from East Huntington, as well as those in Upper Tyrone where officials have started their own sewage authority and plan to install lines throughout the township over the next several years.

With the addition of the two municipalities and the opportunity for both to have a representative of their municipality on the authority's board of directors, a new intermunicipal agreement had to be drafted and signed.

Unfortunately, the process has taken more than two years, and several drafts later, officials with all four municipalities involved have yet to come to an agreement.

Their funding source, the U.S. Department of Rural Development, requires a new intermunicipal agreement be signed because of the proposed expansion of the service area before the low-interest loan of more than $4 million will be released.

Marie Hartman with Widmer Engineering said she received a call from U.S. Rep. Mark Critz's office this week asking why the project was at a standstill.

"We are out of time," she said. "They are very concerned at his office and wondering why we're three years into this agreement and have no signatures."

Dan Hudock of Snyder's law office said, "People are only going to agree to what they'll agree to."

While the big sticking point at one time was for the authority to take over the lines in the municipalities, that is not an issue anymore. The authority has agreed to take over the lines within five years of completion of the new treatment plant.

Now Scottdale and Everson borough officials have other concerns.

"The reason from the very beginning that we wanted the authority to take over the lines was because the cost to repair the aging lines could be a huge expense that the borough wouldn't be able to afford," said Everson solicitor Mark Rowan.

"With the authority taking over the lines, the thinking was there would be a whole lot more customers in the system, and any costs to repair or replace lines within the borough would be spread out over a larger group," he added.

But the language in what is being called the final agreement eliminates that thinking altogether.

"The language now says that if there has to be any capital improvements done within a municipality, the authority can pass the cost on to just the customers in that municipality," Rowan said. "There's no difference, except we would have less control than we have now. "

Hartman said a statement at the beginning of the process made by Dick Widmer, who retired from Widmer Engineering in Connellsville, that the cost would be spread out over more customers was absolutely true at the time.

"But once you put the language in the contract that we'll take over the lines, that thinking goes away," she said. "It's not fair that Upper Tyrone customers, who are going to pay for all new lines throughout the township, have to pay more money to repair failing lines in municipalities that they don't live in."

Another concern of both Rowan and Scottdale Borough Manager Angelo Pallone is that the authority does the billing for all the borough customers, but in the most recent agreement, it states that the authority "may" continue to bill customers.

"This wording doesn't bind the authority to anything," said Rowan, adding that borough cannot afford to bill customers.

On top of that, Rowan said, the agreement has the borough taking responsibility for the payment of any bills that residents in their borough do not pay and even has the borough incurring a 5 percent late fee if the borough fails to collect the money from the customer in time.

Hartman said the agreement also states if the boroughs don't want do their own billing, they can contract the authority to do it, and "we can charge a fee if we want to, but we may not want to."

Little has been discussed on the issue that Everson and Scottdale boroughs don't want to be stuck paying for the debt service incurred by Upper Tyrone, which won't even be using the system until its project is complete and hooked to the system.

That project has not even begun at this point.

Hartman said at the worst, the Westmoreland Fayette Municipal Sewage Authority could lose funding through Rural Development and would have to get a private loan.

"And there is no way that you will get a 2.75 percent interest rate or a 40-year term," she said.

The other option would be to scale down the project to no longer include Upper Tyrone or further expansion into East Huntingdon and just operate under the current agreement it has with Everson and Scottdale.

This would mean both boroughs would continue to be responsible for the repairs of the sewage lines in their respective boroughs.

"We do have an agreement with Scottdale and Everson, and we do want to bring in Upper Tyrone Township and East Huntingdon Township to make it affordable for all," Hartman said. "But if we have to, we can recalculate the project and the number of customers and the size of the plant and just service the customers we have now, although that will make everyone's sewage bill more expensive."

The Department of Environmental Protection could question the lack of regional planning, she said.

Authority board member Troy Soberdash said they've been working toward this new treatment plant project for about 10 years after the DEP mandated that they do something to get rid of overflows in the system.

"We can't hold off anymore," he said. "If we don't do something soon, the overflows will be the death of us."

Scottdale council passed a motion this week calling for the borough solicitor and no more than two board representatives to meet with all the other solicitors involved as well as the authority's solicitor sometime within the next couple of weeks to try to reach a solution.