Report calls WWTA ‘arrogant’
Commissioner Tim Boyd, a longtime critic of Hamilton County’s Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority, has accused the agency of an “arrogant attitude” in a 57-page report he released Wednesday.
“This report, I hope, is a report that can be used constructively in the reorganization of the WWTA by the mayor and whatever committee he puts together,” Boyd said as he distributed copies of “WWTA: A Great Vision Gone Astray” at the end of a County Commission meeting.
Recent state legislation set a 2021 sunset date for the agency, which owns and operates the public sewer system in the unincorporated areas of Hamilton County and the municipalities of East Ridge, Lakesite, Lookout Mountain, Red Bank, Ridgeside, Signal Mountain and Soddy-Daisy. East Ridge forms part of Boyd’s District 8 constituency.
The agency faced disruptions in customer billing in late 2012 when investor-owned Tennessee American Water, which provides water to a significant portion of the WWTA service area, ended decades of joint billing for water and sewer services. WWTA also had to handle costly federal and state orders intended to prevent raw sewage from flowing into the Tennessee River — the source of drinking water for many county residents — after heavy rainfalls.
The report details customer allegations made against WWTA dating back to 2013 that Boyd received by email or that he documented during a series of community meetings he hosted earlier this year. In the report, Boyd claims he conducted more than 100 interviews across the county and received “countless emails and phone calls from constituents.”
Allegations include complaints by renters receiving bills for previous tenants, lack of response over sewage overflows inside a home, and shutting off water services over nonpayment of sewer bills.
The report does not include Boyd’s own personal issues with WWTA. After the meeting, Boyd confirmed he previously faced a water service interruption over a $26 bill.
Boyd’s overarching recommendation for the WWTA calls for the agency to adopt the culture of a customer service agency as opposed to that of “an enforcement agency.”
Other recommendations include a reconfiguration of board member voting power, now weighted and based on population figures. Under existing rules, the board’s five countywide members tally more than 85 percent of the group’s voting power. The seven other members, each representing a municipality, have only 15 percent of the voting power combined — less than any one countywide member.
Boyd calls for reallocating member voting strength by the number of service connections instead of population.
He also recommends splitting WWTA into two agencies — one that maintains the existing system and another that expands the current system.
Mark Harrison, interim executive director for the WWTA, said in a phone interview he had not received a copy of the report and could not comment until he had a chance to review it.
The report immediately drew fire from Commissioner Greg Beck and Mayor Jim Coppinger for its criticisms of former WWTA Director Cleveland Grimes, who died unexpectedly in late March.
“There [were] some problems in the past, but there are much better, diplomatic ways of discussing the WWTA without rehashing old problems or criticizing dead people,” Beck said. “If that’s Christianity, let me off the wagon.”
In one account published in the report, an East Ridge resident questioned whether Grimes and WWTA staff were incompetent, “pathological liars,” or both.
Boyd said he did not author any of the negative comments, but only recorded them as part of constituents’ stories and with “pain and effort to be sensitive to the fact [Grimes is] no longer here.”
Coppinger praised Grimes, citing the Golden Manhole Award he received posthumously from the Kentucky-Tennessee Water Environment Association.
It never made the news when Grimes solved problems in East Ridge, Red Bank, Signal Mountain or Soddy-Daisy, Coppinger said.
“Cleveland did so many good things for this county, and I don’t want that to be lost,” he said.
Contact staff writer Paul Leach at 423-7576481 or pleach@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @pleach_tfp.