Randy's Ramblings: Hudson’s sewer and water service is a good deal

• Wastewater crew

A five-person crew keeps the Hudson Wastewater Utility operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The members are, from left, Director Jim Schreiber (37 years with the utility), Joe Beaudry (31 years), Wendy Carussow (15 years in the field and three at Hudson), Joe Intihar (five years with the utility) and Leroy Esanbock (30 years with the city and three with the utility).

Talk about it

The sewer service and drinking water enjoyed by those of us who live in the city of Hudson or village of North Hudson is quite a bargain.

Wastewater Utility Director Jim Schreiber’s recent report to the City Council on his department’s operation got me thinking about it.

Schreiber delivered a summary of the Compliance Maintenance Report the Wastewater Utility is required to submit the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources each year. It’s a measurement of the sewage treatment plant’s level of compliance with state and federal regulations in nine categories – on a 1 to 4 scale, with a 4 being the highest score.

The Hudson Wastewater Utility scored a superior 3.91 grade point average.

Schreiber pointed out that the treatment plant purifies 2.2 million gallons of wastewater a day. It arrives via 60 miles of sewer main in the city and another 14 miles of sewer main in the village. The collection system includes 14 pumping stations in the city and five in North Hudson.

A five-person staff – Schreiber and four plant operators – keep the complicated system operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

And they do it at a cost that is well below the state average.

The typical Hudson household’s annual charge for sewer service was $221 in the latest statewide survey (for the year 2010), according to Schreiber. The state average for a typical household (defined as one generating 55,000 gallons of wastewater a year) was $369. The average annual household charges ranged from a high of $1,474 in one municipality to a low of $67 in another.

I come to the discussion from the perspective of having owned country homes with private septic systems.

When I was a resident of the Northwoods, I had to replace a failed drain field with a mound system. I don’t remember the price, but I recall that it was enough to make me sweat.

The price of a conventional septic system is around $8,000 these days, if what I read on the Internet is true. If you need a mound system, the cost will likely be $10,000 or more – maybe much more.

That makes the $16.12 a month my wife and I paid for sewer service at our North Hudson abode seem like a pretty good deal. We don’t need the septic tank pumped every three years either, or worry about tree roots and whether the drain field is working properly.

Sewer service is even a better deal for city property owners. North Hudson collects a surcharge of $11.91 per quarter to cover the cost of maintaining its sewer mains and pumps. If my wife and I lived in the city, our monthly sewer charge for the first quarter of 2012 would have been $12.15.

The drinking water that flows from our kitchen tap is an equally good deal, Water Utility Director Tim Caruso assured me.

Caruso had just finished calculating the price that homeowners, businesses and institutions pay to have 1,000 gallons of pure, clear water delivered to their locations. It’s $2.05.

At that rate, the one-liter bottle of water you pay around a buck for in the convenience store would cost 5.4 hundredths of a penny.

“That’s why it drives me crazy when people buy this bottled water,” Caruso said. “I bite my tongue.”

What’s more, there’s a good chance they’re getting tap water anyway. About 40 percent of the bottled water comes from municipal wells, according to Caruso. “It is an unregulated industry. It’s crazy,” he said.

Water Utility operator Dag Selander clued me in on the secret to bottling my own water soon after my arrival in Hudson. The only difference between Hudson tap water and store-bought water, he told me, is the temperature.

Fill a pitcher with water, put it in your refrigerator, and in a couple of hours you have the equivalent of a few of bucks worth of Aquafina. If it makes you feel better, pour it into used water bottles and drink it that way.

My wife and I paid $16.65 a month for the 11,102 gallons of water we used during the first quarter of the year, including the $6.62 monthly charge for the maintenance of fire hydrants.

For that, we get tasteless, odorless water that is tested daily for impurities.

Caruso says the water impact fees that were adopted in the early 1990s have allowed Hudson to go 15 years without a rate increase.

The city was the first in the state to charge land developers for the wells, water towers and mains needed to serve new neighborhoods and businesses. The result was that existing residents and businesses weren’t stuck with the charge.

Caruso played a role in the establishment of Hudson’s impact fees. He was serving on the Public Utilities Commission, the governing board for the Water Utility, when he learned about impact fees through a course on urban economics at UW-River Falls.

Recalling that the late Tom O’Keefe, Sr., a former public works director for the city, had warned him that city residents would pay the price for development if something wasn’t done, Caruso pushed for the impact fees to be adopted.

Now when he attends conferences with other water utility directors, they ask him how Hudson manages to keep its rates so low.

The next time someone tells me that government can’t do anything, I think I’ll let ’em know it’s doing an excellent and cost-effective job of keeping Hudson and North Hudson hydrated and flushed.

Tags: opinion, hudson, government