The Lycoming Sanitary Committee in Montoursville, Pa., closed early last November due to $230,000 debt and insufficient reimbursable funds. The committee had served 35 municipalities in Lycoming County and one in Clinton County since 1974. Its sewage enforcement officers issued 200 and 300 permits per year.
Each year, the agency seeks state Department of Environmental Protection reimbursement for basic permitting and complaint investigations done the previous year, but receives only 85 percent of the annual costs incurred. The 2008 state budget trimmed the amount substantially, according to an e-mail from the committee.
Later that month, the committee received $112,211 of the available $2.2 million in sewage facilities enforcement grants, but the office was closed by then. To bridge the gap before checks arrive, the committee relied on a line of credit. In 2009, it used that line to fund all its operations, then found itself without revenue to repay the loans.
Texas
A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office on fraud cited an unnamed septic tank company in Austin for fraudulently collecting more than $5 million in federal contracts from a program favoring companies run by disabled military veterans. Using veteran-owned businesses as a front, the company received an army contract for septic and related work at Fort Drum, N.Y., and Fort Irwin, Calif.
After its status was challenged in 2008 and the Small Business Administration found it to be ineligible, the company was allowed to continue work on a $1.1 million contract at Fort Drum through 2013. In 2009, the company partnered with another fraudulent disabled veteran-owned small business to receive a $3 million contract at Fort Irwin for septic tank and related services. The report, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business Program: Case Studies Show Fraud and Abuse Allowed Ineligible Firms to Obtain Millions of Dollars in Contracts, is at www.gao.gov.
Michigan
The Grand Traverse County Septage Finance Committee proposed to replace a 12-cents-per-gallon charge to treat septage with an annual property tax assessment of $44 on all septic tanks to offset an expected $2.4 million deficit at the Traverse City Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant over the next five years. The plant takes in less than half the volume and costs almost twice as much to operate as projected when constructed in 2003.
