Norris eyes $20 sewer hike next year to help fund state-mandated upgrades
Although nothing has yet been formally proposed, the city of Norris is looking at a plan to raise the base rate for residential sewer service by $20 a month, possibly in $5 increments spread out over a year to help pay for state-mandated system improvements.
That would raise the base sewer rate to $75.01 a month for the first 2,000 gallons, with usage over 2,000 gallons billed in addition to the base rate, City Manager Adam Ledford said.
Sewer charges are added to the base water bill, which is now $26.96 a month. Norris residents also pay a $15 trash-collection fee and a $3 stormwater fee added to each month’s utility bill.
Altogether, residents who have water and sewer service already pay a monthly minimum utility bill of $102.60. Individual bill totals would vary, however, for households that exceed the 2,000-gallon minimum each month, Ledford said.
Norris has about 700 water customers, but only about 570 also have sewer service, and only those would be charged the higher sewer rates.
During its July 21 meeting, the Norris Water Commission – whose members also are the five City Council members -- discussed raising the sewer rates by the $5 increments every three months until the $20 figure is achieved.
The Water Commission still must approve the $20 rate-increase plan, then forward it on for consideration and approval by the City Council before it could be implemented.
Ledford said Monday that pending approval during a Water Commission meeting, possibly as soon as Aug. 18, the proposal then could be taken up by the City Council. He said he believes the council probably won’t see the measure on its own agenda until its Oct. 13 meeting.
Because the change would have to come in the form of an ordinance, which would need to be passed on first and second readings in separate meetings, final approval probably wouldn’t come until November.
That would mean that the first $5 increase could take effect as of the January utility bills, and the final installment could go into effect in October 2026.
A contractor on July 14 began the first of a planned series of projects that will eventually cost in excess of $5.48 million for the sewer work, which has been mandated by Tennessee environmental regulators.
The Water Commission in June directed city staff, including Utility Superintendent Tony Wilkerson and Ledford, to begin preparing a proposal on sewer-rate increases needed to get low-interest loans from Tennessee’s State Revolving Fund.
While the city has received some grants to cover part of the work, the so-called SRF loans will have to provide the rest of the money, Ledford said.
Hurst Excavating LLC. of Knoxville began work July 14 on a $851,455 contract from the city for the first phase of the sewer-line upgrades, mostly along East Norris Road.
The project includes replacing older sewer lines to help reduce the influx of stormwater runoff that overwhelms the city’s sewage-treatment plant following significant rainfall.
That contract, approved April 14 by the council, will cover about 25% of the sanitary-sewer system, Ledford said earlier.
“These are the areas most in need of repair or replacement to reduce load levels at the sewer plant,” he said.
The work is causing some traffic disruptions, mainly on East Norris Road, as the lines are uncovered, Ledford said. “There will be very little damage to roads.”
In conjunction with that, the council voted June 9 to award a bid for repaving a section of East Norris Road from the Commons to Pine Road. Ledford said the city already has money in the budget to cover that portion, but also plans to extend the work from Pine Road to Cedar Place, near Andersonville Highway, when money is available for that.
As for the sewer project, excess runoff of stormwater into the city’s sewer system has caused the city to run afoul of state environmental regulations.
Since early 2022, Norris has been under a “director’s order” from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation to clean up its discharge of sewage into Buffalo Creek, just south of the sewer plant, which is on the west side of East Norris Road just north of Andersonville Highway.
The department found the city in violation of water-quality regulations concerning those discharges bypassing the sewage-treatment plant.
Last year, the city also set up a new Stormwater Department under control of the city manager, with the goal of creating a better system of managing stormwater runoff than what the city now has, which includes some stormwater collection lines mostly along city streets.
The problem is that during periods of heavy rain, stormwater infiltrates the city’s sanitary sewer system, causing an unmanageable flow to the city’s sewer plant.
There, the excess stormwater mixes with raw sewage, and because it can quickly overwhelm the treatment facility, this combination of sewage and stormwater ends up bypassing the treatment plant, and gets dumped into nearby Buffalo Creek.
The city in early 2022 hired Cannon & Cannon Consulting Engineers of Knoxville to create a plan to remedy the violations. That plan, submitted to the council in May 2022, called for making the required sewer-system repairs beginning as soon as possible, with an estimated completion date of late 2028.
Under the engineers’ plan, the price for the bulk of the work was estimated to be $5.48 million, with a potential bill as high as $6.6 million.
That does not include the possibility the city might need to install a 750,000-gallon holding tank for stormwater runoff, at an additional cost of more than $2.1 million.
The city also will be required to update its sewage-treatment plant. Norris is hoping to get help from other nearby utility systems to pay for the new sewer plant.
