More and More People Having Trouble Paying Their Sewer Bills

Three hundred seventy-six notices of late payment of sewer bills went out to residents recently, WPCA Administrator Brian Lynch told the Town Council in a meeting Monday night.

This number is far greater than the typical number of late notices, which is usually around 240-260, Lynch said.

The average residential sewer bill per quarter is about $88, he said.

"I will work with anybody," Lynch said Monday, "but my ruleis that when the next quarter comes in, you have to pay" that bill.

In other words, Lynch will be happy to work with you and schedule payments to make up what you currently owe. But when the next bill comes out - it's due out in early October - you need to pay that bill in full, he said.

"Everybody has some troubles at some time."

In other business:

The Department of Public Works, Fire Marshal Ray Occhialini, the Emergency Management Team and the fire and police departments received praise from Mayor Joe Jaskiewicz and the town council for the way they handled the storm, and preparations for it.

"I want to thank the public works department," Jaskiewicz said. "The guys did a nice job, a good job. Our fire departments and police departments, we concentrated on getting all the roads that were blocked in trees and not tied up in wires, we concentrated on getting that clear.

"It was a heck of a week," he said.

Public Works Director Donald Bourdeau said he did not yet have the total cost of the work related to Tropical Storm Irene, and that those costs are still adding up.

Public Works staffers are still cutting fallen trees - and, in fact, trees are still falling, Bourdeau said. They are doing this work on overtime.

That means it is work that is eligible for FEMA reimbursement, he said. FEMA will pay 75 percent of the cost of storm-related work that is not straight time.

He said the DPW workers have had CL&P training on wires, and how dangerous it is to touch or handle them. 

One of the most important thing they learned, he said, is to distinguish primary from secondary wires.

“The only difference between secondary and primary," he said, "is one’s an open casket and one’s a closed casket.”