Published: November 23, 2008 01:49 am            

Monongah may seek relief for sewer bill

Town owes $26,000 to Fairmont, disputes its meter accuracy

FAIRMONT — City officials have taken steps in recent weeks to ensure that the Town of Monongah is being charged accurately for sewage treatment.

But these efforts are still not be enough for Monongah officials, who have recently become very concerned about a significant jump in their monthly sewage bills from Fairmont.

Mayor Roger Huffman said Friday that the matter is in the hands of the town’s attorney and will likely be addressed by the West Virginia Public Service Commission. And although Fairmont officials said they have attempted several times to set up a meeting with the Monongah’s mayor and council to get the issues resolved, Huffman said he does not plan on discussing it with them.

“We’re waiting to hear back (from the town attorney) to see what we’re doing from here,” Huffman said. “I think it’s a pretty serious matter.”

Fairmont utilities manager Dave Sago told members of the city’s sanitary sewer board last week that he received recommendations from Everett Springer, the consultant the city uses to calibrate all of its wastewater meters, after he monitored Monongah’s flow meter for several weeks. Springer’s recommendation said he recalibrated the meter and adjusted the electrodes after the town officials began questioning the accuracy of their monthly bills, Sago said.

The recommendation also said Springer determined that between the months of April and October of this year, the meter was, in fact, reading “somewhat high.” But he believes the adjustment will be “very moderate” and somewhere in the 5 to 10 percent range.

The recommendation also said that the meter was not installed improperly, as the data Monongah collected had suggested, but simply set at the wrong angle, which is why it needed to be rotated.

But Fairmont did not install the meter. Sago said that when the contract to start treating Monongah’s sewage was signed by then-city manager Bruce McDaniel in 1997, it stated that the meter was to be purchased by Monongah and maintained by Fairmont.

Monongah hired Chapman Technical Group to engineer the installation of the meter and the work was completed by another contractor. Chapman was also the firm that engineered both the town’s sewage treatment plant and Fairmont’s current water plant.

There is also nothing in the signed contract regulating how often the meter needs to be calibrated, Sago said. Typically, Sago said all of the wastewater meters are calibrated twice a year, or every six months, which is the schedule that Springer was following for the calibration of Monongah’s meter, as well.

Monongah officials became aware that the meter may not be accurate about a year to a year and a half ago when the town’s sewer bills jumped from around $5,000 or less a month to more than $7,500, which they could not pay, causing the town to get behind on its monthly payments, Huffman explained earlier this month.

Today, according to records from Fairmont’s sanitary sewer department, the town is still about 90 days behind on its monthly bills and owes Fairmont more than $26,600. Sago said officials are continuing to try and work with the town to get the bills caught up.

Huffman added that nothing had changed within the utility that would have warranted an increase like this so the town asked environmental consultant Tim Bosley, who does regular maintenance on its sewer system, to start monitoring the meter several weeks ago.

For just a week’s time, from Sept. 24 to Oct. 1, Bosley said the numbers he obtained showed that there was a 900,000-gallon difference between Fairmont’s bills and the run times off the pumps at the lift station.

And although officials said both Bosley and Springer are confident that the meter readings are completely accurate now, Huffman is still seeking legal advice about the inaccuracies that Bosley discovered before talking with Fairmont officials or taking any other action.

E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.

        

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