The incoming administration of DeKalb County CEO Lorraine Cochran-Johnson proposed Tuesday to increase water rates 10 percent per year for the next 10 years, while asking for modifications to a federal consent decree that has been in effect since 2010.
Chief
Operating Officer Zach Williams offered the proposal to DeKalb County
commissioners after they returned from a nearly three-hour executive
session. He said it would "provide the long-term solution that will
allow us to address nagging issues."
With
compounding, the Cochran-Johnson administration proposal would mean
that a $100 water bill today would rise to more than $259 in 10 years.
In
the closing months of his administration, former CEO Michael Thurmond
had proposed three years of 6-percent increases. In December, the Board
of Commissioners' Public Works and Infrastructure Committee recommended
8-percent increases every year for the next 10 years, which would have
meant a $100 water bill would increase to $216.
Williams
described the new proposal as a "longer-term solution." He said the
funding would provide money for sewage tanks at the county's Snapfinger
Creek Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility that would store excess
flows of stormwater and sewage.
While
commissioners did not act on the rate increase, they did approve a
motion to support the build-out of necessary infrastructure to allow
"wet weather storage" tanks to be built at Snapfinger.
The
motion also said commissioners supported the administration's efforts to
work collaboratively with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the
Georgia Environmental Protection Division, the U.S. Justice Department
and the Georgia Attorney General "to seek revisions to the modified
consent degree sufficient to build out such storage."
The
Department of Watershed Management has estimated that the new wet
weather storage facilities, along with pump stations and diversion
structures for wastewater treatment, would cost $80 million and take 30
months to complete.
