A $3.14 billion sewer debt may force new developments and residents with failed onsite systems in Jefferson County, Ala., to hook to sewers. The county, home to Birmingham and 658,000 residents, faces the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. It borrowed heavily to pay for sewer improvements ordered by the federal government, and then a sewer-bond refinancing collapsed more than three years ago during the credit crisis.
New York
An engineering team inspected 760 single-family homes in Bridgeport to find onsite systems and establish locations for grinder pumps as part of a $14 million sewer project. Homeowners must tie to the grinder pumps at a cost of $35 to $45 per foot of pipe. Besides paying the debt service, about $280 per year per residence, they also must pay a $73 short-lived asset fee to cover replacement of the pumps, and $721 per year for sewer and pump station maintenance.
Florida
Representatives Doug Broxson and Marti Coley co-sponsored a bill to scale back a law requiring septic tanks to be inspected every five years and making owners responsible for repairs. The bill is the same one championed last year by Coley in the House and Sen. Greg Evers in the Senate. The law, which went into effect July 1, affects 2.6 million septic tanks.
Rhode Island
Amended legislation extends the 2013 deadline for replacing cesspools within 200 feet of water to Jan. 1, 2014. It keeps the schedule for inspections and replacement of failed systems but allows residents in communities planning to install sewers by 2020 to wait until then to replace their cesspools.
If communities fail to arrange sewer financing by 2015, property owners would have to replace cesspools by June of that year. The legislation also requires cesspools on lots with available sewer connections to be replaced by 2014. Warwick County passed an ordinance allowing cesspools to operate on sewered lots until after the properties are sold.
North Carolina
Wake County health and environmental officials postponed septic tank regulations they adopted in January until May 2012. The Board of Health Services and Environmental Service also agreed to consider the result of an ongoing study on the environmental, health, and financial impacts of a rule, which would require annual inspections of the 60,000 tanks in the county.
