This past Monday, the Northern Blair County Regional Sewer Authority and Tyrone Borough Council approved an agreement on how much money the authority will pay the borough for sewer services in 2002.
The approved agreement by council members calls for Northern Blair to make estimated sewer payments to the borough totaling about $475,000 for 2002, with such additional payments to be made in the last three months of the year.
An exact figure will be determined during a reconciliation period at the end of the year. The authority has paid the borough $40,191 for the revised 2001 Sewer Reconciliation.
Northern Blair has been in discussions and negotiations with the Tyrone Borough dealing with the wastewater plant.
Leo Matuszewski, authority secretary/treasurer, stated, “We finally got to the point where the engineers and the attorneys sat down, and we felt that what we had come up with was fair to the point of going forward now until we get to the reconciliation, which means at the end of the fiscal year then we look at what has taken place and we reconcile.”
Matuszewski explained that sometimes the authority owes Tyrone Borough and sometimes the borough owes the authority.
He added, “At this point we felt that the $475,000 was a fairly realistic figure to go forward with prior to reconciliation. We agreed to pay Tyrone Borough and get caught up at the rate that we would pay them for this year at the 2002 frequent charge of $475,000, and wait until we reconciled and see how it all works out.”
Matuszewski said that because of the way the authority’s budget is laid out, and they’re watching monies ever so closely and will wait until January to decide, but it looks at this point they will have to put a one dollar rate increase per month on to cover this additional cost.
The closing of the Westvaco Paper Mill in October of 2001 made Northern Blair the largest contributor to the Tyrone wastewater treatment plant, which required the authority to pay a higher proportionate share of plant and treatment costs.
“This was a tragic event when Westvaco went out because they contributed nearly 40 percent of the wastewater into the plant and accordingly, picked up 40 percent of the operational cost,” said Matuszewski.
He added, “And then, even though you say, well, you pull Westvaco out, so therefore it should be reduced that much, but you can’t reduce beyond a certain limit of people. You’re still going to have to pay the electricity, maintenance and for all the other factors that come into being.”
That extra cost had to be born by the two who are left, and the two entities of course are the Tyrone Borough and the Northern Blair Sewer Authority, which therefore the cost increased.
Matuszewski added, “We are all keeping our fingers crossed that something happens that Westvaco or someone takes over Westvaco and fires the plant back up, and if that would happen, it would just alleviate all problems.”
With the strong rumors floating about Westvaco reopening, Matuszewski said that was another motivation that Northern Blair went with to not drag out the sewer service issue any longer than needed.
“We don’t want to penalize Tyrone Borough because they have to pay their bills as well, so that’s why we agreed to go with the $475,000 in sewer payments. Al (Drayovitch, Tyrone borough manager) and I both agree, we’re good friends,” said Matuszewski.
