By Jennifer Wing

Staff writer

The sewers in the village of Manlius are now the responsibility of Onondaga County, after the village board authorized Mayor Paul Whorrall to sign a 40-year lease requested by the county sewer department, or Water Environment Protection (WEP).

The board agreed to the county’s request after a presentation by WEP Commissioner Frank Mento at its Feb. 11 meeting highlighted the benefits of the county taking over the sewers, including the village “saving money in both the long and short term,” according to Mento.

“There are six separate service areas [in Onondaga County],” Mento said. “There are six separate wastewater treatment plants. Nineteen towns and villages [and the city of Syracuse] own their own systems.”

The current sewer structure consists of local municipalities overseeing the local sewers, small pumping stations, manholes and laterals. Some of the municipalities have sewer funds and others use the general fund, with fees charged to residents. The county currently is in charge of wastewater treatment plants, pumping stations and trunk sewers and is funded by a sewer fund with a budget for operations and management. County residents have an annual sewer unit charge of $448.81 from the county, along with whatever local municipal charge they pay.

Whorrall called the consolidation agreement “fair and equitable across the board.”

“The current arrangement with the county is such that the village is responsible to maintain all the lateral sewer lines with no revenue source to offset those costs,” Whorrall said. “As the village administration, several years ago, transferred ownership of the wastewater treatment facility and the trunk mains to the county, it only makes sense to now transfer those lateral lines. The remediation of the infiltration and inflow would be unsustainable for the local village taxpayers.”

Mento pointed out that the Meadowbrook Limestone Sewer service area (MBLS,) which includes the villages of Manlius and Fayetteville, the towns of Manlius, DeWitt, and Pompey and parts of the City of Syracuse, is the “most vulnerable” with “extraneous flows” that get into the pipes and overwhelm the area’s wastewater treatment plant.

He said infiltration and inflow (I/I) are a big problem in the Meadowbrook Limestone area, and particularly in the village of Manlius, something the county must address in order to avoid fines from the Department of Environmental Conservation.

“The DEC said, instead of slapping [the county] with a fine [it would give the county time] to deal with I/I,” Mento said. The county has already been authorized $9 million to “attack robustly I/I in line pipes.” He assured board members that this work would “have nothing to do with economic development in the village,” and pointed out that consolidation of the six service areas would allow the costs associated with rehabilitating the MBLS to be spread throughout the county instead of being shouldered by any one single district.

Mento said the benefits of leasing to the county would be:

– All operations, maintenance and capital investment would fall under WEP. There would thus be a unified system “from toilet to treatment.”

– The community benefits from efficiencies and economies of scale.

– WEP, and its extensive, “robust” resources, attacks I/I.

– Financing falls under one jurisdiction, eliminating competition for grant funding.

– Costs are consolidated into a single sewer fund and budget.

– There is a single sewer unit charge.

Mento called the consolidation “phase one” and said to the board, “you are the landlord, we are the tenant [but] we operate and maintain.”

The next steps are for the county executive to sign the lease agreements, initiate the $9 million sewer rehabilitation in MBLS and prioritize other municipalities by sewer service areas with the greatest I/I issues and capacity restrictions.

About WEP

WEP’s vision, “United in Water” has a mission of responsibly improving the water environments in the community, with the guiding principle that “infrastructure matters for our future,” according to WEP’s website.