A new billing system will soon allow the Clearfield Municipal Authority to provide customers with monthly bills.
At Tuesday’s meeting Manager John Williams said they are still working on the conversion process and hope to have everything up and running by February or March.
In addition to switching to monthly billing, CMA will be having a third-party vendor send out the bills, and Williams said that they anticipate considerable savings with this move.
When asked about notifying customers of the change, Williams said they will put notices on the bills prior to the switch and also try to give other information prior to the change over. Right now, new customers are being encouraged to start making monthly payments and older customers can do the same.
Under the engineer’s report, Jim Balliet of Gwin, Dobson and Foreman engineers said that a meeting with the state Department of Environmental Protection in October went well.
DEP agreed to give CMA additional time to close the combined sewer overflow at lift station No. 1, near Buck’s Pizza, due to the ongoing takeover of the township and borough sewer lines.
CMA submitted a tentative schedule to close the CSO once the takeover is complete.
However, CMA could not negotiate a reduction in fines for the sanitary sewer overflow in Hyde. There hasn’t been a significant rain event resulting in needing to open the SSO, but if that would happen, DEP could fine CMA up to $10,000 per day.
A “day” is considered if it is only open an hour or two from one day to the next. For example, if the SSO were opened at 11 p.m. and not closed until 2 a.m. the next day, DEP would consider that two days and could charge $20,000.
So far DEP has not charged the full amount when the SSO has been opened, but under the Clean Streams Act, they could do so.
Balliet also said he has talked with the new engineering firm for the township and they have not done any work to separate sanitary lines from storm water lines in the Hyde area and they don’t know if the township has done anything recently either.
The board also approved copies of the agreements to be presented to the borough and township regarding the eventual takeover.