Photo by Sharon Waldron on Unsplash
The Cumberland town council held a public hearing on its new sewer rates for members of both the Cumberland Waste Water Territory and GEM Waste Water Territory at its Sept. 19 meeting.
The rate hike is coming as a result of the town feeling a need to expand and upgrade its sewer systems, including decommissioning and replacing the North Gem Wastewater Treatment Plant, which currently services GEM customers. Town Manager Ben Lipps said that he has been championing this cause for both Cumberland and other municipalities across the state and the country as infrastructure such as the Cumberland sewers has been left running too long without major upgrades they need to stay up-to-date due to governmental negligence. His argument is supported by a Pew article from last year showing a national trend with backlogged repairs in local infrastructure.
Both territories are seeing a 20% spike each year over the next three years, but GEM residents living near New Palestine argued that the change was unfair to them due to a gap between the territories in both pay structure, with GEM using a flat rate and Cumberland using a usage-based rate, and actual cost, as most residential residents in Cumberland pay less, with a family producing the national average amount of wastewater just paying the base rate, which currently starts $33.80 cheaper for Cumberland residents than GEM residents.
Among the Hancock County residents who spoke at the meeting was County Council member Scott Woolridge, who said that while he understood the reasons why the town needed to upgrade its sewers, the flat rate system had to be replaced.
“I don’t have an issue with it. I’m a family of four,” he laughed.
GEM resident Vicki Williams highlighted the same point, noting that she lived by herself and couldn’t afford the rate hikes proposed over the next three years, which would hit $134.78 in 2027. Most of the GEM residents who attended the meeting, as pointed out by resident Ron Hampton, were elderly and on a fixed income.
A common theme among the GEM residents was a feeling that they weren’t being represented or listened to. Living in unincorporated areas of Hancock County, they have no ability to vote for the members of the town council, and the town opted out of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, giving them very little direct say outside of the single public hearing.
“It would all have been decided before we came,” Williams said. “I mean, they just did what needed to be done and in order to satisfy their regulations as far as having an open forum for us to voice our opinions, but it was a done deal.”
The board voted 3-1 to pass the ordinance, which will go into effect in January. February’s bill will be the first impacted by the new rates.
