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Home > Blogs > Butler County News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > July > 18 > Entry
The (real) cost of water
As we wrote about in a comprehensive set of stories Sunday, many factors generally go into the rates residents across Butler County pay for water.
But looking closely at Butler County Environmental Services - which services residents in West Chester, Liberty and Fairfield townships - human error also contributes to that agency’s total cost.
Years ago, for example, Butler County replaced much of its underground piping with a product called Blue Max Pipe. It was supposed to last forever. It didn’t. The county sued and was forced to settle for a fraction of what it costs to continually replace miles of underground pipe that occasionally burst.
Butler County Environmental Services Director Sue Vance says the is “a million and a half dollar a year problem,” and “one piece of why our rates might be a little bit higher than our neighbors.”
Another mistake happened in 2003. That’s when the county, for reasons officials say is unclear, stopped charging the county’s largest water consumer for “peak” sewer charges. The mistake wasn’t discovered for more than three years, and county policy allows the county to recoup only one year back (see below).
This mistake was found the same time as another that goes back even further. In 2007, Environmental Services staff found that roughly 207 businesses weren’t paying peaking charges because of a mistake during a rules change in 1988.
It’s impossible to calculate how much this cost the county, Vance said.
As for the 2003 error, here is a draft e-mail from Vance to then-county administrator Derek Conklin explaining what happened:
Derek,
Attached is a spreadsheet of Pierre Foods sewer billing history, dating back to January of 2003. Some dates of importance are as follows:
August 2003 - Pierre was placed into a no-peaking status for reasons unknown to us. August 2006 - BCDES’ current administration became aware of Pierre’s no-peaking status.
BCDES does have a policy that was adopted by resolution of the Board just a month or so ago that reflects our historical practice of back-billing up to a maximum of 12 months when under-billing has occurred as a result of incorrect meter readings or a billing error. The policy also requires that we offer a payment plan of up to 12 months, and that no late charges accrue during the term of the payment plan. If we follow the policy and go back 12 months, Pierre would owe $194,497.79.
If we instead decided to back-bill from now to the time that we became aware of their no-peaking status, the amount owed would be $123,369.17.
Our entire Billing/Collections and Administrative Management team dealing with billing issues at DES has turned over since August 2003. We really do not know how or why Pierre ended up being placed in no-peaking status. The most plausible explanation is that Pierre was lobbying DES and the Board at the time to have some of their peaking charges converted to capacity, and some ex-staff members recall perhaps temporarily placing Pierre in no-peaking status until a formal policy could be adopted allowing the conversion of peaking charges to capacity. This never happened, and staff turned over. And, there are no notes or letters in our files to substantiate this.
The one thing that has not changed throughout this entire period of time is Gary Sluss at Pierre Foods. Gary Sluss knows that Pierre is in no-peaking status. He is the one who brought it to our attention in August of 2006. I propose that we ask Gary for his recollection as to why they are in no-peaking, and if Pierre has anything in writing stating why this change occurred. If they have a letter or memo or even a memory that we don’t, it would refute the fact that this was a billing error, and our policy of back-billing would not apply.
Bob and I were trying to brainstorm other reasons why Pierre would have been placed into no-peaking status. It is obvious that previous administrations were aware of this no-peaking problem. We found evidence that both Graham Rich and Tony Parrott stumbled upon the fact that some people were not subject to peaking, but they never researched it and brought it to resolution. It is possible that Pierre (or someone on staff) felt that Pierre was not being treated fairly since some other large industries (i.e. Shepard Color) were in no-peaking status, so they may have removed their peaking charges in an effort to create parity among similarly situated customers. (Note - Shepard Color is one of the customers affected by the 1988 resolution that has escaped peaking charges since their inception.) That is just a guess. There may be other reasons that we cannot guess - Pierre received a new water meter at the exact same time they were taken out of peaking. It could truly have been a billing error. I doubt that because Gary Sluss would not have known about that.
My recommendation is that we contact Gary Sluss and inform him that we believe we have a billing error situation as a result of the fact that they are in no-peaking, and ask him if he can provide documents or at least a written accounting of his recollection of why that is. Then we can make a more informed decision about how to proceed.
Sue
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