County, Cheriton Urged to Rethink Cape Charles Sewerage
CAPE CHARLES WAVE
August 29, 2013
Speakers at two public meetings this week have urged officials to rethink their endorsement of extending sewage treatment to Route 13 from the Cape Charles treatment plant.
Speaking at the Northampton County Board of Supervisors meeting August 26, Supervisor Rick Hubbard said the County needs “a better understanding of what we have set in motion.”
Last night (August 28), Cape Charles resident Deborah Bender addressed Cheriton Town Council, warning them “not to get involved with the Cape Charles Wastewater Plant.” Bender is a member of the political action group CAPE-C: “Citizen Advocates Promoting Effective Change.”
SUPERVISOR HUBBARD’S LETTER TO THE COUNTY
After reflecting on our Board meeting of 13 August, I feel we may have overlooked some things or at least need a better understanding of what we have set in motion. I believe the entire Board truly believes that it is necessary to develop infrastructure in the area of the Cape Charles stop light and has no desire to harm the economic development of the town.
1) Before further engineering studies or plans are done for the project, we must have in place an acceptable, long term fixed rate cost for treatment of waste water to be used by the project.
2) We also need to be sure that the current Cape Charles treatment plant is on sound financial footing and the PSA could not be held responsible for “new” unexpected costs associated with that plant.
3) The treatment cost plus the cost of the installation of the proposed project must be in line with other communities or we will need to look at other treatment project service areas.
4) We need a better understanding of the actual amount of waste to be treated and the number of current clients who are willing to hook up at the present time.
5) We also need a better understanding of possible/probable clients, their usage requirements and a reasonable guess of when they may possibly need to be online, so the proper scope of the project may be determined.
I thank you for taking the time to read and think about this and look forward to a discussion on your thoughts about these issues at our August 26th Board meeting.
Respectfully,
RICK HUBBARD
4th District Supervisor
CAPE-C MEMBER BENDER’S STATEMENT TO THE TOWN OF CHERITON
I am a resident of the town of Cape Charles. I am here tonight to warn the Town of Cheriton not to get involved with the Cape Charles Wastewater Plant.
The chairman of the PSA board (Public Service Authority) is Bob Panek. Bob Panek is also Cape Charles assistant town manager. Of course he wants to hook up with the businesses on the highway and coming into Cheriton. While he was busy pushing the town into the new wastewater plant he never thought about the almost $300,000 annual payment. Now because the town can’t find the money for the payment, everyone in Cape Charles just got almost an 80% monthly sewer increase!
At this time they want to run the sewer pipe out to the highway, crossing into Cheritan to your town limit sign and up and down both sides of Route 13 for approximately 1/2 to 1 mile. The county will then create a special tax district and then all of the small businesses will get a $.55 tax increase to pay for the sewer pipe! This tax increase and being forced to hook up to the pipe may actually put some of the small businesses out of business.
Although the new sewer pipe is not going to go completely through the Town of Cheriton, make no mistake, before this is all said and done, it will. When that happens everyone in this town will be forced to hook up to the sewer pipe.
Bob Panek will tell you and your mayor Joe Habel that the monthly bill will only be around $42 or so. How can this be when the residents of Cape Charles are paying a minimum of $60.85 just for sewer? Our home has two people and last month our sewer bill was $74.93.
Today I pulled up an article from the archives of the Eastern Shore News regarding the sewer/wastewater treatment plant dated March 6, 2013: “It’s hard to believe this is the same water that came into the treatment plant,” said Bob Panek, assistant town manager. “Treated water goes into the (Cape Charles) harbor, and it is crystal clear,” he said.
Here is a sample of what really comes out! Does this water look clear to you? This is what is being dumped into the Chesapeake Bay.
The Town of Cape Charles is further in debt than ever before, and a lot of it has to do with our big fancy sewer plant — a plant that Mr. Panek had the audacity to locate next door to one of the historic Rosenwald schools.
Believe me when I tell you that your little town should not get into any business deals with the Town of Cape Charles. Bob Panek is not to be believed under any circumstances.
Look at the mess he was directly behind in Cape Charles. He was a major force behind the selling of our historic 100-year-old school for a whopping $10 — plus the town gave the developer a check for $41,000. We lost our basketball courts, our parking lot for the playground, and the historic school that sits on $900,000 worth of land. All thanks to Bob Panek.
Do not let your mayor persuade you into believing that this sewer pipe is a good idea.
There will be a meeting of the PSA board on September 16 at 7 p.m. here in the firehouse. Tell your friends and neighbors to come out and fight this idea for a sewer pipe. It is wrong, it will be expensive, and it will hurt your town.
If you have any questions please call CAPE-C, which stands for Citizen Advocates Promoting Effective Change, at 757-331-1191.
You can also read many stories about the problems the citizens of Cape Charles have been through by going to capecharleswave.com . This is an online news source for everything happening in and around Cape Charles. Look at the latest and past news articles and you will learn more than you will believe.
DEBORAH BENDER
CAPE-C (Citizen Advocates Promoting Effective Change)
Would someone help me understand her point? A larger volume in the plant will make it operate more efficiently and lower the cost for everyone.
If you think our sewer rates will really go down you must not know much about how this town operates! Whenever they have the chance to raise taxes or water/sewer rates they do. Welcome to Cape Charles — Now get out your wallet!
One of the biggest problems with this sewer plant is they insisted on designing it for an increasing population that doesn’t exist. At first, the Cape Charles sewer plant was designed for 500,000 gallons per day, then they dropped it to a stated capacity of 250,000 gpd, but one that could be readily upgraded to 500,000 gpd (i.e. it is really still the 500,000 gpd capacity in many respects).
The real usage is 150,000-160,000 gpd. None of the politicians seems to accept that the populations of Northampton County, Cape Charles, and Cheriton have all been shrinking for the past 50-80 years. Guess what — that means we don’t need to build the plant for 3 times the current population (160,000 gallons vs. 500,000 gallons/day). Does it take a rocket scientist to see that if you build a plant several times larger than needed, it will cost more to run?
Now that Panek has convinced Cape Charles to build this plant larger than necessary because of “free grant funds falling from the sky,” they have suddenly discovered it costs more than they thought to run it, so they want to inflict the cost of their poorly thought-out plans on the rest of the county. Personally, I’m not in favor of paying for their poor planning.
Don’t trust their “interpretation” of the survey results, either — they claim 5 positive responses out of 64 surveys sent out is a majority of people in favor or their proposal. Seems like some remedial math is in order.
There also seems a clear conflict of interest with Panek serving as both the head of the PSA and the assistant town planner for Cape Charles — of course he wants the county to bail him out of his boondoggle!