Petition calls for change in sewer service billing

A State College developer who has been calling for changes to the University Area Joint Authority’s billing system for more than a decade recently created an online petition.

Tom Songer, managing partner at Torron Group, and associates are petitioning the Centre Region Council of Governments to mandate several requirements in the 2017 Act 537 plan (Pennsylvania Sewage Facilities Act).

Among the requirements they are seeking is for UAJA to adopt a rate resolution that charges a uniform rate for sewer service to all customers based on water meter readings (volumetric billing).

The petition states that customers should “pay for the sewer service they receive.”

State College borough residents are already charged this way.

UAJA uses an equivalent dwelling units (EDU) system to bill for sewer service.

A single-family detached home is an EDU and is expected to use 175 gallons of water per day, the petition states. All residential homes pay the same amount, no matter how much water they use.

UAJA’s wastewater treatment plant has to have the capacity for a home or business, regardless of how much wastewater they discharge on a given day, UAJA Executive Director Cory Miller said.

“For UAJA, the amount of water is really not that important as compared to the amount of the organic matter in the water and the amount of nutrients that are in the water,” he said.

Even if someone is conserving and putting less water into the system, there’s just a higher concentration of the same mass of organics and nutrients, he said.

Miller said if UAJA had a way to measure the nutrients and organic matter directly, then volumetric billing would be a reasonable way to bill.

Songer says in the petition that billing customers for what they use will incentivize people to conserve water.

“UAJA loves water conservation, but we want to see water conservation done right,” Miller said. “We want to see a regional water conservation plan that might have a volumetric billing as one of the components. So if the region embarks on a regional water conservation plan, UAJA will certainly be involved in that and very supportive.”

As of Saturday, the online petition had 105 signatures.

This story was originally published August 5, 2017 at 4:11 PM with the headline "Petition calls for change in sewer service billing."