Drained finances

You can’t turn a toilet off from a central switch in Spokane County. If you could, frustrated county officials might try that method to get the attention of residents who have failed to pay their sewer bills.

“We’d have to dig down 8 to 20 feet and put a plug in their sewer plug, and we’re not going to do that,” said Bruce Rawls, Spokane County utilities director.

Of all the utility services, sewage disposal is taken the most for granted. People do their bathroom business and assume all will be taken care of in a process they’d prefer not to think about too much. Out of sight, out of mind.

That’s just one of the reasons more than 10 percent of the county’s sewer customers haven’t paid their sewer bills in three months or more. Some of the delinquent customers own commercial properties; others are residential customers.

If they all paid up, the county would have $1.4 million it’s entitled to – money used to help ensure that when you flush the toilet, the waste is properly taken care of.

County officials don’t have much muscle with which to collect these delinquent bills. They can place liens on property, but until the property is sold, and the lien paid off, they are out the money.

Rawls has been brainstorming other ways. County commissioners asked him to present within two weeks a proposal for the best methods to collect these overdue bills.

County residents pay about $27 or $66 a month for sewage service, depending on when and how they connected to the county sewer system.

The overdue-bill collection proposal provides a teachable moment. Sewage disposal, besides being taken for granted, is the least understood of the utility services. But it has an important connection to larger community issues.

The health of the Spokane Valley/Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, for starters. When septic tanks are removed from properties, it has a direct beneficial effect on the health of the aquifer. Fewer septic tanks in aquifer-sensitive areas translates to fewer risks that those septic tanks will leak oxygen-gobbling nutrients into the groundwater.

The aquifer is the sole source of drinking water for 500,000 Inland Northwest residents. The Spokane River exchanges water with the aquifer in several places along its route. So the health of both is related to proper sewage disposal.

“We aren’t a high-income community, and I’m sensitive to that,” Rawls said. “People have every life experience that impacts their ability to pay. But we have to have revenue coming in the door. We run a business, and we have obligations to meet. And our obligation is to protect our environment. The river is such an important resource.”

After a story ran Wednesday outlining the delinquent sewer-bills problem, Rawls was not inundated with calls from delinquent taxpayers hoping to settle up. In fact, no one offered. Short of turning off toilets or sending out sewage-disposal awareness teams, Rawls and other county officials face an ongoing challenge to go after sewer-bill scofflaws.

Pay up, delinquent county residents. It matters.