Challenge county?s RUSS involvement

To the editor:

Since Jefferson County is a member of Regional Utilities Service Systems, your readers may have heard that several member counties are trying to withdraw from it, and that RUSS is involved in several lawsuits with Residents for a Better Richmond in the unincorporated village of Richmond in Washington County.

As a member of RBR I would like to share some of the experiences that have taught us a lot about RUSS. They have convinced us that it is a deeply flawed organization which we simply do not want involved in our community.

Richmond residents want any sanitary problems in our community fixed, but aside from two water samples, collected under dubious conditions in 2001, no attempt has ever been made to determine what sanitary problems actually exist. In spite of this, RUSS and our county supervisors want to force a $1.8 million lagoon sewer system on us when we know there are better and cheaper alternatives.

Because of its hilly location, Richmond is probably the last place on earth where a lagoon system should be built. A centralized sewer system would require numerous pumping stations, high-pressure sewer lines, and a pump in each home. We could expect rising fees and high maintenance costs, with the likeli­hood of frequent, smelly, and unsanitary breakdowns.

We have learned that RUSS itself has no expertise in sanitary engineering. Instead of an independent, disinterested expert for an initial evaluation, it uses a few private engineering firms to decide what small communities need, and then to oversee construction. It therefore came as no surprise when one such firm, with minimal examination of our town, told us that we needed exactly what they were selling ? an expensive lagoon system.

Furthermore, RUSS has no expertise in maintaining sewer systems but must depend on a private contractor, risking the creation of another ?political plum.?

RUSS appears to function merely as a conduit through which huge quantities of public money is channeled to a few private companies. Its contribution to its projects is limited to fundraising, and a major portion of that still falls on counties or municipalities. Indeed, RUSS seems to be one of those proverbial government bureaucracies whose only purpose is self-preservation!

With its history of management problems, RUSS is finan­cially precarious with massive accounting difficulties, and is associated with serious ethical questions. It needs new projects simply to survive, and is very predatory in its use of threats and intimidation to entrap small low-income communities. One of RBR?s current lawsuits concerns what we consider to be illegal threats made by RUSS against property owners who refuse to sign away their legal rights.

I write this to alert Jefferson County voters and to suggest that they challenge their county supervisors to justify their involvement in RUSS. Be assured that this is already becoming a major issue in the upcoming elections for county supervisor in Washington County.

? David Rosen, member of Residents for a Better Richmond