Members of ALCOSAN’s advisory committee say that residents are complaining about increases to their sewage bills. In 2000, the average customer paid less than $100 per year for sewage treatment. In 2022, the average customer will pay $550, increasing to more than $1,200 by 2036.
These rising fees are going to pay to expand the size of ALCOSAN’s sewage treatment plant and build more than 15 miles of tunnels underneath Pittsburgh’s three rivers where excess sewage and stormwater can be stored when the system is overloaded. The original size of the project was paired back by around $1.5 billion to make these changes more affordable to residents.
At a meeting last year, Mary Ellen Ramage, the manager of Etna and vice chair of the advisory committee, told ALCOSAN staff that she wanted a review of rates. “We just finished our budget, and our sewer fees for ALCOSAN is 25% of our budget and that is a pretty staggering number,” she said. “Twenty-five percent of our entire budget, police, fire and everything else, and that’s pretty staggering.”
Federal policy defines sewage bills greater than 2% of the median income in an area as unaffordable. Right now, the average ALCOSAN customer spends about 1.5% of their income on their sewage bills, according to the authority.
By 2036, ALCOSAN predicts that its median customer will be spending just under 2% of their income. That could mean nearly half of its customers will be paying an amount greater than what the federal government considers affordable.
But in practice, many residents already are paying more than they can afford. There are 13 municipalities in ALCOSAN’s service area where the average bill tops 2% of income, according to data compiled by Three Rivers Wet Weather, a nonprofit funded by ALCOSAN.
Many of these individual customers are, in theory, eligible for customer assistance from ALCOSAN. But according to records provided by ALCOSAN, fewer than 2% of the customers in the areas where the sewage is unaffordable are signed up for the low-income assistance program.
And these rising costs are increasing complaints.
Tim Rogers, the chair of the advisory committee and the manager of Shaler, said ALCOSAN’s portion of his residents’ water and sewage bill now exceeds 50%. He’s been hearing complaints from families and from elderly residents on fixed incomes. An elderly customer called him up recently, he told the committee in March, and asked him, “What the hell is ALCOSAN?”
The committee has been trying to share ideas and messages for how to explain what the money is paying for. “Everything going on with the rates is really something that they're required to do in the consent orders,” Ruthann Omer, the former president of Gateway Engineers and committee member, said. “ALCOSAN as well as the municipalities do not have a choice.”
As the costs go up, ALCOSAN isn’t responsible for covering the difference when customers are delinquent on their bills. Local municipalities and water authorities are required to pay ALCOSAN even for customers that don’t pay up. That means, Rogers said, some water authorities are becoming increasingly aggressive about shutting off the drinking water of customers who can’t afford ALCOSAN’s rising bills.
“We’re terminating service for people who can afford our service but can’t afford the ALCOSAN service,” he said.
ALCOSAN appears to have begun responding to the public pressure.
It increased the generosity of its grants to low-income customers this year for the first time. In previous years ALCOSAN had raised the amount of its assistance by a smaller amount than its bills were increasing by, effectively making its assistance less generous every year. But last year ALCOSAN increased the amount of its assistance $20 per year, twice as generous as its 7% bill increase.
ALCOSAN has also more than doubled the number of low-income customers it has signed up for its bill assistance program in the last year, to 5,684, according to data provided by ALCOSAN.
How did they sign up so many customers so quickly? “We partner with our municipal customers to spread the word about the program to our customers, as well as keeping them informed on other available programs for low-income customers,” said Joseph Vallarian, a spokesperson for ALCOSAN in an email. Vallarian didn't make any ALCOSAN staff available for interviews.
The amount of assistance needs to increase and the program needs to become more accessible for residents, said Ken LaSota, a geology professor at Robert Morris University and the mayor of Heidelberg, who serves on the advisory committee. It’s harder for small communities like Heidelerg with few resources to get customers signed up, he said.
“One really big issue that the committee has always shared with ALCOSAN,” he said. “We have to have some way, some mechanism to try to mitigate these increases in the fees.”
