RUSS discusses easements

RUBIO (GNTS) ? Officials from Washington County and the Regional Utility Service Systems met with people in Rubio Wednesday evening to discuss the coming sewer project and to address concerns raised about the project.

About 20 residents gathered in the Rubio Community Center to learn more about the sewer project with Richmond and Ollie, which is slated to begin sometime this spring. Representatives from Geode Resource Conservation and Development Inc., which is acting as administrator for RUSS, architects from Garden and Associates, who designed the project, and Washington County Public Health Environmental Director Jeff Thomann spoke with the group. Supervisors Wes Rich, the county?s RUSS representative, and Jim Miksch, who represents Rubio in his district, also attended the meeting. County attorney Larry Brock was at the meeting, but didn?t address the audience.

?It?s been a while since we held [a public meeting]? Rich said. ?We felt we needed to hold another one. We are hoping to talk about easements. We have a lot of funding to do this project and we?d like to make sure it goes along fine.?

He said there had been some problems acquiring easements from people in town. Garden and Associates architect Jeremiah Selby confirmed about 14 easements still needed for the project haven?t been signed. He said RUSS hopes to begin the project as soon as possible with as little cost as possible and the delay was adding cost to the project.

Resident Mike Davis asked if the 30-foot easement requested was negotiable. He said many of the lots in the unincorporated community were 50-by-140 feet and the easements would equal about half of the land people own. He also said many of the buildings in Rubio were within 30 feet of the street.

Selby and Errin Keltner, also of Garden and Associates, explained the purpose of the easements. They said the property owner would retain ownership of the land, but the easements give RUSS the authority to come on the land to make any needed repairs to the sanitary sewer.

People at the meeting said several other people in town had refused to grant easements and had refused to come to the public meeting. The panel said RUSS had no authority to force them to do anything and that the county was in charge of enforcement. The county will be fined by the Department of Natural Resources if the sewer system isn?t brought up to standards. Thomann said his office is working hard to gain the cooperation of the people in the community, but there could be legal consequences if cooperation is refused.

?It is much better to let the county take care of it locally than to have the state or the feds come in and take care of it,? he said.

About 75 percent of the project also will be paid for with grants, Rich said. If a property owner refuses the project initially, it will cost more money to hook onto the system later or to bring their septic system into compliance on their own.

Geode coordinator Christa Perkins said today the construction won?t start until all the easements are acquired. Once the project begins, she said, it would take three to five months to complete.

Once complete, water use rates would be about $30 per month, plus $8 per 1,000 gallons in excess of 3,000 gallons. Perkins said residents would have a coupon book with payment vouchers for each month. She stressed RUSS is a non-profit and the money paid would be used for the cost of the sewer, maintenance and administration.

Rich said in the other communities RUSS has operated, he could only remember one instance when RUSS had increased sewer rates.

?We aren?t there raising rates all the time,? he said.

In October 2001, Rubio was cited for having improperly treated sewage. The project was partnered with projects in Richmond and Ollie to received a greater amount of grant money and to lower the costs of the systems to property owners.