Paint Brush Hills Metropolitan District resident Cheryl Riggs is concerned she might be paying double for her sewer services. Riggs said she pays both Woodmen Hills Metropolitan District and PBHMD for sewer services.ìThere was some battle going on between Woodmen Hills and Paint Brush Hills about the sewer,î Riggs said. ìEvidently, Paint Brush Hills lost, and Woodmen Hills won. We did not care who we paid but no one in the community wanted to pay both.îGene Cozzolino, WHMD water/wastewater director, said the districts were engaged in litigation, which was resolved in June 2011. ìThere was an issue with the wastewater treatment plant not working the way it was supposed to,î he said. ìWe owned 50 percent of the plant and operated it. Paint Brush Hills held the permit for the plant and owned the other 50 percent.îCozzolino said the districts received recommendations from three engineers about how to fix the problems with the plant. ìWe found out the plant would only handle 750,000 gallons of wastewater per day, not the 1.3 million gallons it was rated for,î he said.Woodmen Hills wanted to proceed with the recommended corrections, but Paint Brush Hills was hesitant, he said. WHMD put in another retention pond to try to meet the plantís performance rating without any financial input from Paint Brush Hills, but it did not make a big enough difference, Cozzolino said. ìWe did everything we could to get this plant operating properly.îWoodmen Hills filed a lawsuit to gain control of the plant and get the permit in their name so they could make the necessary corrections to get the plant on the right track, Cozzolino said. In June 2011, the districts settled the lawsuit under an intergovernmental agreement, he said.In that IGA, PBHMD became a customer of WHMD for their wastewater treatment only, Cozzolino said. ìWe are not responsible for the collection system, just the treatment of their wastewater,î he said. ìThey have to maintain their pipes and the lift stations.îRiggs said PBHMD sent out a newsletter a while back stating they had lost the lawsuit and residents would be paying the districtís attorneyís fees. The district never said how long their residents would need to pay those fees, Riggs said.However, Cozzolino said the attorneyís fees PBHMD residents were paying was not for the litigation that resulted in the IGA. ìWhen we filed the suit against Paint Brush Hills to get control of the plant, they were defended by their insurance company,î he said. ìThey, in turn, sued us. When they brought that lawsuit, they had an attorney that they had to pay for.îLeon Gomes, district manager for PBHMD, said all those legal fees were paid off in 2011. Everything PBHMD customers pay to WHMD is for treatment of their wastewater, not legal fees, he said.PBHMD charges residents for maintenance of the pipes and lift stations.The confusion could be that PBHMD lists a ìsewer feeî on its bill but does not specify what that covers, said Lisa Peterson, WHMD administration director. ìPaint Brush Hills residents get two bills, one from their district and one from us,î she said. ìWe list our fee as a ësewer treatment feeí so residents know we are only charging for wastewater treatment.îRiggs said she noticed her bill has been increasing for a few years and will again increase in 2016.Gomes said PBHMD received an average rate increase of 6.5 percent from Mountain View Electric Association in June 2015. The district can either absorb that cost and look at how to reduce costs somewhere else, which would probably mean reducing services; or they can increase rates, he said.In 2016, WHMD will be charging PBHMD customers $33.92 per month to treat their wastewater, while Woodmen Hills residents will pay $38.29, although the board of directors still has to vote on that amount, Cozzolino said. The rate is less for PBHMD customers because they are only paying for treatment services, he said.ìIt costs us $5 per month per household to maintain the collection system for Woodmen Hills only,î he said. ìPaint Brush Hills charges their residents $17. But that rate is not up to us to determine.îGomes said the IGA between the districts is perpetual, and it could only change under the direction of both district boards.The treatment plant is still out of compliance so WHMD is still paying the fines, Cozzolino said. However, the district is following a compliance order from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and plans to have a retrofit of the wastewater treatment plant completed by October 2018, he said.ìThe retrofit will enable the plant to treat the originally designed 1.3-million-gallon-per-day capacity,î Cozzolino said.
