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Hassert:
Reconsider
sewage plant fees
Joilet Herald News
- 8/2
A
local legislator wants the state to reconsider new fees being
charged to towns and other operators of sewage treatment plants.
This year's budget authorizes the Illinois Environmental Protection
Agency for the first time to charge fees for inspections and other
aspects of overseeing facilities that discharge treated water
into public waterways.
It costs the state about $6.5 million to administer the program.
But the new fees are expected to rake in $25 million, with the
surplus helping to offset a $5 billion state budget deficit.
A major concern is that towns didn't anticipate the charges and
didn't allocate funding in local budgets to cover the costs, said
state Rep. Brent Hassert, R-Romeoville. The Legislature signed
off on the program because it had limited time to review Gov.
Rod Blagojevich's budget, Hassert said.
"Nobody
caught the magnitude of what these fees were going to do to municipalities,"
Hassert said.
Joliet last month agreed to pay the state $125,000 for its two
treatment plants, said Dennis Duffield, the city's public works
director. While other towns are paying the fees under protest,
Joliet didn't contest the charges, he said.
"They're
collecting more than it takes to operate the program. It's clear
they need this to balance the state budget," Duffield said.
Bolingbrook Mayor Roger Claar has said his town is being billed
$45,000, and that the costs likely will have to be passed along
to residents because the village didn't anticipate the fees.
Hassert wants the Legislature to revisit the policy during the
fall veto session. Municipal leaders have told him they understand
the state's need to cover its costs of overseeing sewage treatment
plants. But they object to a program that will raise by four times
the costs of the program, especially since they were charged nothing
in the past.
"In
my opinion, it's a hidden tax that shouldn't be there," Hassert
said. "I don't think the purpose was to tax municipalities."
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