City seeks new rates for septic tank haulers
The Hot Springs Board of Directors will consider an ordinance tonight that establishes a new fee structure for septic tank haulers that rely on the wastewater treatment plant on Davidson Drive.
The city charges haulers a $20 fee to discharge wastewater at the plant. The ordinance the board will consider tonight would replace the flat fee charged per discharge with a 5 cent per-gallon charge. Utilities Director Monty Ledbetter told the board the 5 cents would be applied to the full capacity of the hauling vessel.
“It’s based on the full ca
pacity of the truck,” he said. “You’re going to get charged for the size of the truck, because we don’t have any way to meter (the discharge).”
According to a letter Ledbetter sent city administrators, the $20 fee amounted to a 1 cent per-gallon charge on the more than 3.2 million gallons haulers discharged from January 2019 to August of this year. The fee generated $35,240 over that time, but the 5 cent per-gallon charge would have collected $173,824.
“The current fee of $20 per load does not offset the (operation and maintenance) cost associated with the service and is inherently unfair to smaller operators,” Ledbetter wrote in the letter.
The utilities department projected the new fee structure would collect $147,747 in annual revenue compared to $29,954 from the flat $20 fee. Ledbetter told the board about a dozen companies use the plant as their discharge point. Their tank capacities range from 500 to 4,500 gallons.
“The sources of wastewater will be private residences with some commercial enterprises,” he wrote in the letter. “Not city of Hot Springs wastewater customers. I believe charging by the gallon capacity of each tank is a much fairer way to recoup some of the cost of providing this service.”
The ordinance would also enable the city to charge an annual $75 permit fee for each truck that discharges waste at the Davidson Drive plant. Ledbetter said the city would inspect each vehicle/tank before issuing a permit.
According to information presented to the board, Bryant, El Dorado, Jonesboro, Malvern, North Little Rock, Paragould, Pine Bluff and Van Buren do not accept waste from septic tank haulers.
“There are very few cities that even take this,” Ledbetter told the board. “We looked at dropping this program altogether. I don’t recommend doing that. We could run into some problems if we did that. They’re going to dump it somewhere. I’d rather them bring it to us and let us take care of it the right way.”
The city’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit allows it to discharge wastewater treated at the Davidson Drive plant into upper Lake Catherine.