Cherry Valley ‘watchdog’ seeks answers on district’s high water bills
By
Mark Sullivan
Telegram & Gazette Staff
Posted Mar 16, 2019 at 7:58 PM
LEICESTER — The Cherry Valley & Rochdale Water District charges
some of the highest water rates in the state: $143 a month per 1,000
cubic feet (roughly 7,500 gallons), or $95 more than the state median of
$48.
Margaret Biscornet Darling, who is among the district’s 1,200 ratepayers, wants to know why.
“We want a full accounting of where our money has gone and why they have never looked at ways to lower the rate,” says Mrs. Darling, an administrator of the Cherry Valley/Rochdale Water/Sewer Users group page on Facebook, which had 77 members this past Wednesday.
People are having trouble paying their water bills, she said. “Oh, my God, yeah,” she said. “They’re close to foreclosure.” She said as many as 120 customers — one-tenth of the district’s ratepayers — were slated to have their water shut off starting March 15. Twenty-eight homes had liens placed on them this past May for unpaid water bills, she said.
Local officials say they’re trying to meet the challenge of rising costs of providing water and sewer services in a town that has eight separate water and sewer districts, vestiges of an era before subdivisions and modern environmental regulations when Central Massachusetts villages pumped from ponds for relatively small numbers of neighborhood subscribers.
The Cherry Valley & Rochdale Water District recently struck a 20-year agreement to purchase water from Worcester, which led to a significant increase in operating costs, with only 1,200 ratepayers to share them, said Kevin Bergin, chairman of the district’s three-member commission. “As a very small district, any increase in costs is disproportionately expensive and results in higher-than-state-average water rates,” Mr. Bergin said.
Steph Trainor said she and her husband and four children share a 1,600-square-foot Cape with one bathroom. She said their monthly water bill is between $250 and $275.
“We have lived in town for 10 years, but the past few years have been extremely hard as we have struggled to pay the high water rates,” Ms. Trainor said this past Tuesday. “Last year, because of a past due balance, a tax lien was placed upon our home. Since we pay our taxes through our mortgage, our mortgage went up about $270 per month. Now we are in jeopardy of losing our home.
“We also have a current balance and are scheduled to be shut off on
Friday, along with 113 other households,” she said. “We use as little
water as possible. My husband, children and I all take (five-minute)
timed showers.”
Mysti Green said when her family moved from Worcester to Cherry Valley two years ago they received a water bill for more than $250. “At first we thought it was a quarterly bill, a bit higher but maybe manageable,” she said. “But each month we keep getting another bill.
“It affects everything when you’re just making ends meet,” she said. “You don’t have money for anything extra. You need to budget every dollar. The water is just clearly not affordable to the low-income or blue-collar worker. We pay the (same) taxes as the rest of town, and utilities are not equal.
“We were interested in doing something and then Margaret put a note in our mailbox,” Ms. Green said. “So we joined our neighbors. Margaret is a little bit of a watchdog. Margaret and some others are just trying help our neighbors and design a better long-term solution that is affordable to everyone.”
More openness in the water district’s workings is an aim of Mrs. Darling’s group.
Their request to have the district treasurer’s report placed online was approved by the commission at its March 5 meeting. Previously a customer had to visit the office with a written request for the document under the state’s Public Records Law and pay 5 cents a page for a copy. “It was one page,” Mrs. Darling said. “I went in with my nickel.”
The commission had been meeting at the district’s office at 148 Henshaw St. every other Monday morning. “I’m retired,” said Mrs. Darling, 75. “I was attending meetings in the morning. You’re there alone because people are working.”
She requested that meetings be moved to every other Tuesday night,
when more people could attend. The commission agreed, and since February
has met the first and third Tuesdays at 7 p.m. in the garage at the
water district headquarters.
The garage isn’t an ideal public meeting place, Mrs. Darling said. “There’s only half enough chairs for the people that are there,” she said. “So the rest stand around in the garage.”
A request to move the Tuesday meetings to space at Town Hall was turned down by the commission at its March 5 meeting. Mr. Bergin cited the cost of renting the Town Hall gym, which he said came to $100 for rent and $50 for custodial service, with a $75 deposit.
But Mrs. Darling said she contacted Town Hall and found the selectmen’s room was available on Tuesdays and could be had for free.
“They want to keep us out in a garage,” she said.
Mr. Bergin said the commission would take up the question of moving to free space at Town Hall at its March 19 meeting.
Also to be taken up at the March 19 meeting is whether a question-and-answer period will be allowed at future commission meetings, Mr. Bergin said. Currently questions have to be submitted in writing in advance, Mrs. Darling said.
Mrs. Darling said Worcester charges the district roughly $39 per
1,000 cubic feet (or 7,500 gallons) of water, but the charge to Cherry
Valley customers is more than three times that following markup by the
water district.
She was asked if she has found it challenging to get answers from the commission. ” ‘Challenging’ is an interesting word,” she said.
Mr. Bergin was asked by the T&G to describe the expenses that drive rates up.
He wrote via email this past Monday: “In addition to purchasing water from the City of Worcester, the Cherry Valley and Rochdale Water District still needs to run and maintain an entire water distribution system. All of our day to day tasks remain the same now (that we are purchasing water from the City of Worcester) as when we were pumping water out of Henshaw pond, with the exception of having to treat the Henshaw pond water with chemicals ...
“In the year prior (FY 2017) to us purchasing water from City of Worcester, our annual budget was $1,005,578.06. This amount included all of our operating expenses to run, treat, and maintain the water distribution system (including our debt service). In the fiscal year 2018, our annual budget was $1,583,808.06, (including our debt service) of which we budgeted $540,000 to purchase water from the City of Worcester ...
“As you can see, there was a significant increase in our operating costs to purchase water from the City of Worcester. This cost is shared by 1,239 ratepayers. As a very small district, any increase in costs is disproportionately expensive and results in higher than state average water rates.
“We had an independent, outside consulting service come in and perform a rate study analysis which compared our costs/budget, historical water pumping usage and the expected costs of purchasing water from the City of Worcester. This information was used in compiling our current rates.”
Mr. Bergin said the district will work with any customer who is
experiencing financial hardship and contacts the office to arrange a
payment plan.
Leicester Town Manager David Genereux said Tuesday that an informal working group has been formed to discuss approaches to the community’s water and sewer challenges including, potentially, a merger into a unified district.
He said participants include representatives of each of Leicester’s eight water and sewer districts, as well as the Department of Environmental Protection and the offices of state Sen. Michael Moore, D-Millbury, state Rep. David LeBoeuf, D-Worcester, and U.S. Rep. James McGovern, D-Worcester.
They hope to find ways to help ratepayers in the Cherry Valley & Rochdale Water District and, in an even more dire situation, the more than 400 customers of the Cherry Valley Sewer District, which faces impending bankruptcy, Mr. Genereux said.
Meantime, Mrs. Darling saves money on water as best she can.
She and her husband, Leonard, both Army veterans, draw on military experience in conserving water to keep bills under $100 a month.
While heating the shower, she uses a plastic bucket to catch the runoff that otherwise would go down the drain — “that would be a waste,” she said — and uses it to water the houseplants.
And she doesn’t do laundry at home. Mrs. Darling was interviewed this
past Tuesday as she did her wash at Webster Square Laundromat in
Worcester. “We keep our bill low,” she said.
She’ll keep going to meetings and asking questions.
“I felt so frustrated because they were always looking for a way to add fees, to add another fee on top of a fee on top of a fee,” she said. “I never once heard them talk about a way to reduce the rate.”
Margaret Biscornet Darling, who is among the district’s 1,200 ratepayers, wants to know why.
“We want a full accounting of where our money has gone and why they have never looked at ways to lower the rate,” says Mrs. Darling, an administrator of the Cherry Valley/Rochdale Water/Sewer Users group page on Facebook, which had 77 members this past Wednesday.
People are having trouble paying their water bills, she said. “Oh, my God, yeah,” she said. “They’re close to foreclosure.” She said as many as 120 customers — one-tenth of the district’s ratepayers — were slated to have their water shut off starting March 15. Twenty-eight homes had liens placed on them this past May for unpaid water bills, she said.
Local officials say they’re trying to meet the challenge of rising costs of providing water and sewer services in a town that has eight separate water and sewer districts, vestiges of an era before subdivisions and modern environmental regulations when Central Massachusetts villages pumped from ponds for relatively small numbers of neighborhood subscribers.
The Cherry Valley & Rochdale Water District recently struck a 20-year agreement to purchase water from Worcester, which led to a significant increase in operating costs, with only 1,200 ratepayers to share them, said Kevin Bergin, chairman of the district’s three-member commission. “As a very small district, any increase in costs is disproportionately expensive and results in higher-than-state-average water rates,” Mr. Bergin said.
Steph Trainor said she and her husband and four children share a 1,600-square-foot Cape with one bathroom. She said their monthly water bill is between $250 and $275.
“We have lived in town for 10 years, but the past few years have been extremely hard as we have struggled to pay the high water rates,” Ms. Trainor said this past Tuesday. “Last year, because of a past due balance, a tax lien was placed upon our home. Since we pay our taxes through our mortgage, our mortgage went up about $270 per month. Now we are in jeopardy of losing our home.
Mysti Green said when her family moved from Worcester to Cherry Valley two years ago they received a water bill for more than $250. “At first we thought it was a quarterly bill, a bit higher but maybe manageable,” she said. “But each month we keep getting another bill.
“It affects everything when you’re just making ends meet,” she said. “You don’t have money for anything extra. You need to budget every dollar. The water is just clearly not affordable to the low-income or blue-collar worker. We pay the (same) taxes as the rest of town, and utilities are not equal.
“We were interested in doing something and then Margaret put a note in our mailbox,” Ms. Green said. “So we joined our neighbors. Margaret is a little bit of a watchdog. Margaret and some others are just trying help our neighbors and design a better long-term solution that is affordable to everyone.”
More openness in the water district’s workings is an aim of Mrs. Darling’s group.
Their request to have the district treasurer’s report placed online was approved by the commission at its March 5 meeting. Previously a customer had to visit the office with a written request for the document under the state’s Public Records Law and pay 5 cents a page for a copy. “It was one page,” Mrs. Darling said. “I went in with my nickel.”
The commission had been meeting at the district’s office at 148 Henshaw St. every other Monday morning. “I’m retired,” said Mrs. Darling, 75. “I was attending meetings in the morning. You’re there alone because people are working.”
The garage isn’t an ideal public meeting place, Mrs. Darling said. “There’s only half enough chairs for the people that are there,” she said. “So the rest stand around in the garage.”
A request to move the Tuesday meetings to space at Town Hall was turned down by the commission at its March 5 meeting. Mr. Bergin cited the cost of renting the Town Hall gym, which he said came to $100 for rent and $50 for custodial service, with a $75 deposit.
But Mrs. Darling said she contacted Town Hall and found the selectmen’s room was available on Tuesdays and could be had for free.
“They want to keep us out in a garage,” she said.
Mr. Bergin said the commission would take up the question of moving to free space at Town Hall at its March 19 meeting.
Also to be taken up at the March 19 meeting is whether a question-and-answer period will be allowed at future commission meetings, Mr. Bergin said. Currently questions have to be submitted in writing in advance, Mrs. Darling said.
She was asked if she has found it challenging to get answers from the commission. ” ‘Challenging’ is an interesting word,” she said.
Mr. Bergin was asked by the T&G to describe the expenses that drive rates up.
He wrote via email this past Monday: “In addition to purchasing water from the City of Worcester, the Cherry Valley and Rochdale Water District still needs to run and maintain an entire water distribution system. All of our day to day tasks remain the same now (that we are purchasing water from the City of Worcester) as when we were pumping water out of Henshaw pond, with the exception of having to treat the Henshaw pond water with chemicals ...
“In the year prior (FY 2017) to us purchasing water from City of Worcester, our annual budget was $1,005,578.06. This amount included all of our operating expenses to run, treat, and maintain the water distribution system (including our debt service). In the fiscal year 2018, our annual budget was $1,583,808.06, (including our debt service) of which we budgeted $540,000 to purchase water from the City of Worcester ...
“As you can see, there was a significant increase in our operating costs to purchase water from the City of Worcester. This cost is shared by 1,239 ratepayers. As a very small district, any increase in costs is disproportionately expensive and results in higher than state average water rates.
“We had an independent, outside consulting service come in and perform a rate study analysis which compared our costs/budget, historical water pumping usage and the expected costs of purchasing water from the City of Worcester. This information was used in compiling our current rates.”
Leicester Town Manager David Genereux said Tuesday that an informal working group has been formed to discuss approaches to the community’s water and sewer challenges including, potentially, a merger into a unified district.
He said participants include representatives of each of Leicester’s eight water and sewer districts, as well as the Department of Environmental Protection and the offices of state Sen. Michael Moore, D-Millbury, state Rep. David LeBoeuf, D-Worcester, and U.S. Rep. James McGovern, D-Worcester.
They hope to find ways to help ratepayers in the Cherry Valley & Rochdale Water District and, in an even more dire situation, the more than 400 customers of the Cherry Valley Sewer District, which faces impending bankruptcy, Mr. Genereux said.
Meantime, Mrs. Darling saves money on water as best she can.
She and her husband, Leonard, both Army veterans, draw on military experience in conserving water to keep bills under $100 a month.
While heating the shower, she uses a plastic bucket to catch the runoff that otherwise would go down the drain — “that would be a waste,” she said — and uses it to water the houseplants.
She’ll keep going to meetings and asking questions.
“I felt so frustrated because they were always looking for a way to add fees, to add another fee on top of a fee on top of a fee,” she said. “I never once heard them talk about a way to reduce the rate.”
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