Miami’s Sewer Politics Part I

This is part one is a series on Miami’s Sewer woes and the politics of service.

Time to Pay the Piper

The phrase, ‘Up S*&% Creek without a paddle comes to mind when one looks at Miami’s sewer problems. It’s not that Miami is unique in its unenviable position in facing a complete break down of its sewer lines.  Communities from Kingman to Glendale are raising sewer rates, floating municipal bonds and hoping on a prayer and a song that their sewer systems will last just long enough to allow them to find a solution.

In Miami it seems, the prayers have run dry. There is no option but action on a sewer system which has seen one too many repairs. There are places in Miami where sewage has been seen flowing in the streets and down hillsides as a result of broken or over-taxed pipes and several major collapses have cost the city big bucks they don’t have just to make temporary fixes.

It is time to face facts…and pay the piper.

The case of fact-finding

A lack of leadership and political will has plagued many communities where good leadership is more often defined by how many of your neighbors like you than by all effort spent in crafting good public policy.  It is, afterall easier for the average politician to understand what makes their neighbor happy, than to wade through regulations, financial statements and personnel policies and try to make sound judgments about big, stinky, expensive issues like aging sewer pipes and rising landfill costs which affect everyone.

It is easy to say “something must be done about this!” It is quite another to accept the task of spending countless hours, in countless meetings to come up with good policy. In Miami, newly elected council members, Susan Hanson and Darrel Dalley, stepped in last March to find a solution to the problem after another volunteer left the position.

“I was against the rate hike at first,” says Don Reiman, who has since been instrumental in helping the Miami Town Council to craft the new ordinance . “Or atleast I felt I needed more information before I could agree to it,” he explained.  At the time, “…I asked how much new revenue the rate hike was going to bring into the town and no one knew. I asked  how much was it costing the Town to operate today. No one knew. I asked what it was going to cost in the future. Again, no one seemed to know.”

It left an opening for Hansen, Dalley and Schaefer to step in and offer to do their own research on behalf of the town and draft an ordinance . Their offer was accepted by the council and they were given the go-ahead.

Councilmember Susan Hanson approached local businessman, Don Reiman and said, “Since you’re the guy asking all the questions would you help us?” Reiman, who not only has a law degree and a good understanding of federal and state regulations,  spent 25 years in utilities billing with a company which serviced over 2 million subscribers. It was sheer providence to have someone with Reiman’s street credentials in this process volunteer his time to help in putting together a new rate structure . One which would stand up under  Federal and State scrutiny – and local scrutiny. Despite his qualifications for the task at hand, Reiman was still submitted to a process which involved fingerprinting and background checks since even a volunteer doing this kind of work is privy to private information.

Reiman began by getting answers to his own questions. Ones he felt had to be asked to arrive at a valid end point. What does it cost to operate today? What was a new system going to cost? And how does the current fee system compare to the actual costs to provide services.

“What we found is that the sewer fees have been paying for trash service. ” Reiman explained. The town charges $11 for garbage pick up (household trash etc) and $1.95 for all bulk trash which consists of yard debris, old engines, etc. Yes, you heard right. NOT $1.95 per pound but $1.95 for the whole thing!  “That may have been fine 20 years ago, but it isn’t today ” he said. “Landfill fees have skyrocketed and it was actually costing us more money than we were collecting to provide  these services. We were going in the hole by about half ” Reiman concluded.

It was also discovered that only 70% of the population receiving services actually pay for them. There is an additional 30% delinquency in paying for services which the Town now addressing. The new collections process is working. People are hearing that the Town is serious about collecting. In the past  residents could beg ignorance saying they didn’t know they needed to sign up for Sewer and that no one ever asked them about it.  True. No one ever did.

But it’s a new day in the neighborhood.

So not only was the formula flawed in terms of charging enough to cover costs, but the administration tasked with collecting and recording payments was flawed. The sewer rates were being used to pay for the shortfall in garbage and trash. There was no money left to go back into a sewer fund.  According to Hanson, ” No one knew that.  No one had really done their homework so they didn’t know what they didn’t know.

“The ship was afloat without a captain,” Hansen says.

Not only that, but the seas below that ship were anything but calm. And the water isn’t blue.

“We don’t really need a new sewer. We can just fix the one we have. ” comment made at Council by a citizen upset over new sewer rates.

When Miami Resident, Susan Hanson went to check on her rental house in September ’08, she found a yard full of raw sewage. It’s no secret that Miami has struggled with an aging system which continually breaks down, so although distressing – the situation was not totally surprising. Since the home was vacant at the time, Hanson didn’t have to also cope with relocating renters. She just had to address the lake of sewage.

“I called the Town and told them about the problem and because they are understaffed and had the guys on garbage pick up that day, no one came out to address it then. However, the next day when I went back to check on things it seemed the sewage in the front yard had gone down and I thought – ‘great they were able to get out here after all and fix the problem.’ That’s when I opened the front door. ”

The sight that greeted Hansen was a river of S*%$ which snaked through the hallways, into the bedrooms, across the living room floor – for as far as the eye could see. She could hear a funny sound towards the back of the house and followed it to the bathroom where she found more S*%$ erupting from the toilet like a geiser and hitting the ceiling.  It seems the main sewer pipe had clogged and the only pressure release for the backed up slurry was the pipe which led into Hansen’s rental home.

“I called my plumber and asked what do I do?”

He told her to run outside. Find the main pipe leading to the house and bust a hole in it…” and then stand waaaay back.”

She did and a new geyser erupted out of the break in the pipe.  This  relieved the pressure in the house. The toilet stopped bubbling over and the sewer flow stopped in the house.

In the end this little incident cost the Town $15,000.  It included a five thousand dollar out of pocket payment with the balance picked up by the Towns’ Risk Management insurance policy.  It seems that one of the benefits of living in an incorporated area and paying taxes for services like police, fire…and sewer is that layer of accountability when S*%# happens.

As Hanson explains, ” The actual cost of this fiasco was actually more than the $15,000 the Town paid. We had to put additional money into the property to bring it back into use. But the liability of the Town could have gone much higher if it (the house)  had been occupied at the time. ” According to EPA standards, the walls and floors had to be cut 12″ up (anywhere it had come into contact with the sewage) and in some cases gutted. It was four months before the home was livable again.

“We looked at the pipe which had broken and found it had been poorly wired together.” Susan said. “Later, we also walked down the gully to see if the homes below us had been affected. Built fairly recently they are some of the newer, up-scale homes. Yet the occupants seem un-surprised at the question. Sure, they said. There had been overflow. But there had been overflows in the past.

In fact the homeowners even had a name for the flow of sewage that ran down the hillside on a semi regular basis: Shit Creek.

Hanson got elected to a seat on City Council the following month and four months into her term found herself involved in the renewed effort by the Town to tackle the sewer problems which threatened the literal foundation of the the Town.

“I try to tell people my experience and let them know, …this town simply can’t afford the liability of collapsing sewer pipes. This same situation could happen easily – at any time.”

PART II: The Research. The Public. The Ordinance. The Money.

Channel 15 came to Miami and did a story on the towns problem. Reporter: Jay Reynolds. See full account HERE.