In our city, I live in a new subdivision where a good part of the cost of the property was the state-of-the-art, Army Corps of Engineers approved sewage and drainage systems (including the wetlands). Then, the EPA clamped down on the entire city because of it’s decrepit sewer systems in the older neighborhoods. Solution? They tacked the cost of ripping the old stuff up onto the sewer bill for everyone. It takes a village, you know...
“In our city, I live in a new subdivision where a good part of the cost of the property was the state-of-the-art, Army Corps of Engineers approved sewage and drainage systems (including the wetlands). Then, the EPA clamped down on the entire city because of it’s decrepit sewer systems in the older neighborhoods. Solution? They tacked the cost of ripping the old stuff up onto the sewer bill for everyone. It takes a village, you know...”
in a town we use to have some rental property in, a local sewer agency, not the city, builds & maintains the sewer system, floats bonds if/when needed for capital projects, and charges quaterly fees to everyone hooked up on the system, but ONLY someone hooked up on the system, as some homes were not connected and were staying on their existing septic tanks and might not be added to the system for a long time, or ever in some cases
people only became part of paying for the sewer system as it expanded to include them, and the approval for new bonds for new capital requirements as the system grew depended on substantiating that the new sewer-rate-payers to whom service was expanding would be enough additional customers to support the revenue needed to add the cost of the new bonds, as well as the expanded operations, to the sewer agency’s budget, so that increased rates for existing customers would not be needed
one of our properties never got hooked up (too much vacant land on that street). another one did and when it did (when that section was added) rates neither went up for existing customers, nor did those in the added section pay a different rate than existing customers
the growth of the system was well planned, both geographically and financially
it could have been very expensive, because “environmentyal” interests wanted every residence in the area hooked up and off of the septic tanks, regardless of costs, and in that area, with some streets/roads having just a few residences over a very long distance, the per-capita costs of a “total” system would have been extremely high, and the local pols managed to get a waiver from the state so they could proceed on their incremental plan, keeping any growth within limits that were reasonably affordable