Bringing Fairness and Equity in Sewer Charges in South Windsor

Bringing Fairness and Equity in Sewer Charges in South Windsor

M. Saud Anwar
Member of South Windsor Town Council

In the last 2 years, South Windsor residents have experienced a significant rise in sewers usage fees.  Rates have increased 30%, to $374, as compared with $288, 2 years ago. The Unit Charge Method, used in South Windsor, applies the same rate to all consumers, regardless of consumption, the number of occupants or the size of a dwelling. It provides no incentive for water conservation or environmentally friendly practices. Therefore, the unit charge method of taxation seems to be unfair and is inequitable.   The inequity lies in applying the same flat rate to all consumers; for example, the single unit owner who flushes the toilet a few times per day is charged at the same rate as the multi-occupant home residents who flush many more times per day.

I believe that we in South Windsor need to move towards an Actual Volume Method (AVM). The users need to be charged based on actual volume of water a user discharges to the sewer line. As no residential units have a meter on their sewer line, using the water delivery information from public water supply serves as the best gauge for the usage. This method brings fairness and cost allotment based on use.  

One of the potential limitations with this new proposed method is that in summer months people do use more water for their lawns, washing cars and in some cases swimming pools. As these activities are in summer months only, and are not truly representative of the sewer usage, using the average water consumption information acquired during the winter months serves as the best gauge for the usage.

Those people who chose to use more water pay for their usage, while those who do not, are not penalized. This consumption based method brings fairness to taxation. Other communities use and prefer this AVM. In Twinsburg, Ohio, which switched to AVM, among the people surveyed (with a 50% response rate), 85% preferred to convert to actual volume method. Water conservation is a responsible activity that can result in immediate benefit of decreased sewer charges.

While the final decision for the sewer charges and policy remain with the Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA), I am sharing with the community a solution for the concerns many have raised with me with the hope that WPCA will seriously consider this. I want to propose the AVM method to bring fairness. This Actual Volume Method would have a minimum basic charge for every dwelling using the towns’ sewer collection and treatment system. This would be in the range of $50/per dwelling/ per quarter. This would be the base amount that would be charged if people are using 0 to 5000 gallons a quarter. Beyond that, there would be a charge which in the range of $8 to $10 per 1000 gallons. The quarterly charges would reduce the burden on taxpayers and avoid the big changes that have occurred in the past 2 years.

I want to acknowledge the South Windsor WPCA members for their volunteerism.  I also want to thank Mr. Fred Shaw for providing some of the information on our towns’ current status and George Rostkowski, business manager for the Vernon WPCA, who has helped to successfully implement the Actual Volume Method for charges in Vernon, CT. and shared some of the local experiences with me. I believe that this proposal will help most residents reduce home sewer charges and move our community towards a more responsible use of water.