Sewer-bond sale gets the go-ahead

Little Rock’s wastewater utility has been authorized to take out $11 million in bonds to pay for improvements to a sewage treatment plant to increase capacity during heavy storms and reduce sewer overflows.

The Little Rock Board of Directors approved the bonds in a 10-0 vote Tuesday. Most of the money will be spent replacing 35-year-old equipment at the Fourche Creek treatment plant, increasing its daily capacity from 36 million gallons to 52 million gallons.

This will help limit sewer overflows, which the utility has been mandated to correct by 2023 in an Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality consent decree and in a court settlement with the Arkansas Sierra Club in a 17-year-old lawsuit.

The bonds will not increase sewer rates since city directors already gave the Little Rock Water Reclamation Authority — formerly Little Rock Wastewater — permission in 2015 to increase rates by 4.75 percent each year between 2017-2021.

A customer who paid $30 per month in 2015 will pay $39.64 monthly in 2021. That customer would also see an increase in the franchise fee — which is 10 percent of the usage bill — from $3 to $3.96.

The utility will pay off the new debt with a portion of the monthly fees it collects from ratepayers. The annual increases through 2021 are expected to raise almost $213 million in new revenue for the sewer utility.