According to a recent notice from the Fayette County Water System to its customers: “Effective July 1, 2014, the Fayette County Water System implemented an excessive Leak Protection Program. We have implemented this program to financially assist our customers in dealing with large, unintentional water leaks.”
Is this program yet another scheme of Steve Brown and Steve Rapson to extract money from paying water customers without these customers’ input?
These two men have already burdened the county with a $15 million program to replace corrugated metal storm sewer pipe that they claim to be in a state of crisis. Now they are going to save us again by instituting a policy to replace an unwritten policy that has been in place since 1955.
This policy exists not only in Fayette County but in DeKalb, Fulton, Douglas, Henry and other counties in Georgia as well. This policy extends to customers, simply because they are customers, a compensation for “large, unintentional water leaks” by charging them the average monthly rate for the month in which that leak occurred.
There are currently 27,000 residential water customers in Fayette County. We are charged almost three times as much for the first 2,000 gallons of water than we are for the remainder of what we use monthly. I assume this charge is to pay for overhead: employees, offices, utilities, vehicles, treatment plants, distribution system, etc.
Residential customers in Fayette County pay the water company $498,960 minimum each month. The actual amount received from residential customers is about four times that figure because of the additional amount used beyond the initial 2,000 gallons used. I would guess that the amount used by churches, schools, businesses and industrial plants is five times that amount.
I would also guess that since the inception of Fayette County Water System in 1955 the company has not spent a year’s billing on all the private leaks for which they compensated its customers.
Compare that expenditure to just one of the problems resulting from Steve Rapson’s micro- or mismanagement, e.g., the stinky water problem. In that instance the public knows that Tony Parrott took the blame. The public also knows that the taxpayers paid for a representative of CH2MHill to analyze the problem and offer a solution.
Instead of taking responsibility for this crisis, another professional was hired, in my opinion, to deflect blame from the county manager. That solution should have come from Steve Rapson working through our own water department personnel.
I would ask Fayette County Water Authority to rescind this levy on its good and trusted residents and seek reparation from Mr. Rapson for the millions of gallons poured down the storm sewer trying to purge the system of foul smelling and tasting water.
I would ask the Fayette County Commissioners to find a more competent manager and not to be consistently influenced by Steve Brown who seems to manufacture crises so that he can jump in and hire the best consultants to solve the problems he has created.
Charles Phillis
Peachtree City, Ga.
