WSSA requirement called property rights issue

Local landowners met last week at the Best Western Charlottesville Airport Inn & Suites to discuss effects of Greene County’s new Water and Sewer Service Area (WSSA).

All who would develop within WSSA are required to hook up to Rapidan Service Authority (RSA) utilities – an action that comes with a $10,000 current charge per EDU to hook up to sewer lines and a $10,000 current charge per EDU to water lines. In addition, the developer would bear all costs of constructing any infrastructure necessary to connect to that belonging to RSA.

“We view this as a Greene County property rights issue,” said Steve Jones, chief operating officer for Fried Companies Inc.

Jones called the meeting following actions taken by the Greene County Board of Supervisors May 24 and 25.

On May 24 the Board held an unannounced special meeting May 24 to revise county ordinances and establish the WSSA. In addition, it amended the Greene County code pertaining to regulation of private water and sewer systems, special use permit regulations relating to water and sewer utilities, and definitions in the subdivision ordinance pertaining to water and sewer systems.

On May 25, as scheduled, Jones went before the Board to request a certificate of convenience and necessity for Fried’s Monroe Heights subdivision, to be located on the southwest corner of U.S. 33 and Celt Road in Stanardsville.

As presented, according to the minutes of the meeting, Jones was seeking the Board’s go-ahead to install a private community water system with community wells and a community sewage disposal system. According to Jones, Herb White of WW Associates in Charlottesville, the county engineer, wrote a letter saying public water and sewer were not available for Monroe Heights.

The design of the system calls for the effluent to flow by gravity from homes into a central collection tank, which where a duplex pump will send it to a treatment unit. There, it will go through a treatment process and then into an equalization tank before being distributed to drain fields. The system will have generator back-ups in case of a power failure. The Monroe Heights Water and Sewer Company would have been established, and, either someone would have been hired to manage it, or it would have been sold.

The Board’s approval was necessary before the developer could file applications with the Virginia State Corporation Commission for certificates of public convenience and necessity under the Utility Facilities Act.

But without referring to the meeting of the day before, or making any reference to the new district or amendments, supervisors unanimously denied Jones’ request.

Supervisor Carl Schmitt said the construction of such systems would, essentially, constitute the creation of a water-sewer authority. “We already have an authority,” he said. “We don’t want another. We don’t want the competition.”
Supervisor Jim Frydl agreed with Schmitt. Chairman Steve Catalano. Vice-chairman Buggs Peyton and Supervisor Mike Skeens did not say they agreed, but they did not say they disagreed.

County officials explained that another service authority in the county would interfere with county revenue. The county’s share of water-sewer hookup fees goes to reduce debt service on its Rapidan Wastewater Treatment Plant, which went into operation at the end of June 2006.

The current balance on the plant debt is $41,925,330. The county makes payment on that debt twice a year out of its water and sewer fund, which contains a balance, as of March 29, of $3,856.80.

If landowners cannot pay the hookup fees that will enable the county to make its payments, the county’s general fund could be used to do so, according to officials.

But can landowners afford to do so?

While Jones has said that three Fried properties currently under development in the county have been severely impacted by the creation of WSSA, he has also said that the company will survive – but others may not.

Of those localities that fall within the Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District, Greene’s connection fees are by far the highest.

According to the 21st Annual Virginia Water and Wastewater Rate Report 2009, published by Draper Aden Associates, Greene County has some of the steepest connection fees around.

Albemarle County Service Authority charges $710 for a residential water connection fee, and $3,310 for a residential sewer connection fee; Louisa County charges $1,000 for a residential water connection fee and $4,000 for a residential sewer connection fee; Nelson County charges $2,000 or $4,000, depending on location, for a residential water connection fee and the same for residential sewer connection fees; and the Town of Orange charges $4,075.10 for a residential water hookup fee and $4,116.38 for a residential sewer hookup fee.

In the report, Greene’s fees are listed as “cost + $10,000.”

It’s that terminology that has Jones – and others – concerned, because what it means is infrastructure.

“If you have a parcel of land within WSSA and you want to give it to your grandchildren, if you want to sell it or develop it, you better know how you’re going to get water to it,” Jones told those gathered at the Best Western last week. “If you have 10 acres you want to divide into 10 lots, does it economically work?”

Take wastewater, for example: “Wastewater flows from a home by gravity into a gravity sewer line and eventually makes its way to a pump station,” explained Tim Clemons, RSA assistant general manager.

The pump station – which a landowner may have to build -- then picks it up and sends it down a pressure line – and that, said Jones, “costs somewhere about $40 per foot.

“Can you afford to have that sort of off-site expenditure, and then write the county a check for $10,000?” Jones asked.

“The previous ordinance was very specific,” Jones continued. “It said that if you were within 350 feet of a gravity line you had to connect to it. The new ordinance as it written right now says that if sewer is nominally available, you must connect. I don’t know what ‘nominally’ means. I don’t know whether that means a mile; I don’t know if that means 10 feet.”

According to Svoboda, modifications to the ordinances revised by the Board May 24 are currently under discussion.

Jones said that under state code, modifications can be made up until July 13, but those modifications have to soften the blow, “and make this a better ordinance.”

At press time, a public hearing on WSSA and related ordinance revisions has been scheduled for Tuesday, July 13 at 7:30 p.m. at the William Monroe High School Performing Arts Center.

Ken Lawson, former chair of Greene County supervisors, and now director of special projects for Fried, urges all landowners to attend.

“Come to the meeting. Bring your family with you. Make it known that the action affects you and those in your family that will own property in the future,” Lawson said.