Councilwoman Wicks' Comments

The sewer district survey mentioned at the League of Women Voters event was brought up in last night's council work session. The document provided at the October 17th meeting of the Central Weber Sewer Improvement District was a mid-way update on the survey currently in process, not a final report with recommendations.

It's true that our sewer system needs upgrades. I am not sure when the last survey was done, but it was some years ago. Much of the need for increased system capacity will come from projected growth in the coming years in Weber County, much of this will likely be outside of Ogden City limits as we do not have the space for large scale development like some other communities do.

Instead of passing on costs to increase capacity to existing users who have been paying to maintain the system for years and are not creating the need for increased capacity- impact fees should be assessed to new connections to the system. The 12-hour system shutdown that occurred during the summer was the result of a massive rainstorm that inundated the system. This is an exceedingly rare occurrence and it's hard to build a system to handle these types of events that only happen once every few hundred years.

The average citizen can help reduce the amount of waste solids entering the system by composting their non-animal food waste instead of sending it into the wastewater system via a garbage disposer. See:http://www.eco-labels.org/greenconsumers/products.cfm?product=garbagedisposer