The Town of Ignacio's issues with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe's charges for sewage treatment are continuing in the new year.
Interim Town Manager Mark Garcia told the town board on Jan. 18 that the tribe is proposing dispute mediation, while the town wants an analysis of the rates the tribe charges to town customers.
He passed out a letter received that day from Darrell Owen, Tribal Growth Fund finance director and acting executive director. Owen's letter referred to a Dec. 12 letter from the tribe that proposed two area residents as mediators. He lists a proposed scope of work for the mediators.
"What we really need is the rate analysis, the cost to treat water and waste water," Garcia said. "We haven't seen that. Moving forward, we should strive for that."
He has argued for several months that the town is being charged disproportionately for the town's share of sewage plant loading. In October the town started pressing the tribe for the rate analysis. The tribe adjusts its water and sewer rates to the town each Oct. 1. In November the town raised its rates to customers to reflect the tribe's 2016 increases, plus its 2015 increases that weren't passed on to town customers back then.
According to the letter from Owen, the sewer treatment agreement was signed in Nov. 2009 and the water service agreement in Dec. 1998.
The main issue has been sewer rates. Town sewer customers are now paying $72.99 per month per equivalent residential tap (ERT), with $11.82 of that going to the town to cover its costs to bill customers and to maintain sewer lines in town.
"We haven't been raising our portion of the rates," Garcia said. "That's all our operations and maintenance and billing to cover our own costs. We haven't raised it because the treatment is so high." He wants a rate analysis to include what the town should be charging to cover its costs; also to get a proposed scope of work back to the tribe.
"They (the tribe) say the rates charged are what the town agreed to," Garcia said. "The agreement with the tribe is fairly clear, but we are questionng the rate. Our rates are approaching 60 percent higher on waste water than when we started. We want to see how that compares to their actual costs. The rate to tribal members should be for collection and treatment. Ours should be just treatment, but our rates are higher than tribal members."
Town Public Works Director Jeremy Schulz added that there are five entry points for town sewage to go into the tribe's system. Only one is metered, but he guessed that 80 to 90 percent of the town's sewage enters there.
The town could put in its own meters at all five entry points, $3,500 each just for the equipment, Schulz said.
Garcia countered that the tribe already has the data those meters would provide. He suggested using the tribe's data in the rate analysis before installing meters. It's assumed that all the treated water the town buys from the tribe ends up at the sewer plant. If the town's sewer flow is more than that, it probably reflects groundwater infiltration into the town lines, he said. "That becomes part of our rate analysis, to fix the (infiltration). He also has argued that the increased flow benefits the sewer plant operation.
"Bill us on our water consumption," Garcia said. "Then we can start moving forward with a legitimate (sewer) rate."
