New Albany: Sewer “Crisis” 2010: Part 1 – How We Got to This Point.

With Randy Smith's permission, NAC is happy to reprint this series of five articles as counterpoint to the prevailing blather.

New Albany: Sewer “Crisis” 2010:

Part 1 – How We Got to This Point.

Anyone paying attention recognizes that New Albany’s sewer “crisis” of 2010 is a manufactured dilemma, not some shocking revelation from out of the blue.

I say “anyone paying attention” with intent, by the way. For far too long, rational people with normal lives have turned their eyes away from city government, many repulsed by what passes for municipal policy and politics. But in New Albany, looking away is akin to handing your ATM card and PIN to your ne’er-do-well nephew right after he flunks out of rehab.

Not to be critical of people coming out of rehab. Frankly, the dysfunction of New Albany’s City Council might be ameliorated by replacing some of its members with a Rehab All-Stars Barbershop Quartet.

However, utter the words “rate hike” and everybody starts paying attention.

As Indiana’s first big city in population and industry, New Albany built sewers long ago. They built them well, too, and after a century, many of those original pipes were still doing their boring jobs. But like the world’s oldest woman, those pipes were destined to expire someday. A series of leaders who grew up at a time when the sewer department was little more than a source of patronage jobs suddenly found out that the 19th-Century investment would have to be repeated. Ultimately, at the not-so-gentle urging of the Environmental Protection Agency, New Albany became a part of the first wave of genuine enforcement of environmental laws. The city was, quite literally, dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, again well ahead of its peers.

Accordingly, New Albany has undertaken massive upgrades and incurred massive debt to be the example for the rest of the state of Indiana, resulting in relatively higher sewer rates when compared to comparable Indiana cities.

Some would call us lucky. After all, we’re upgrading our sewers with today’s dollars at a cost that is surely far less than it will be 10 years from now. Others would call us unlucky in that we are shouldering a burden that our sister cities haven’t yet taken up.

Personally, I find it hard to credit those who say the cure is worse than the disease. After all the current “sturm und drang,” after all the investment, New Albany will stand again as a leader and New Albanians will live in a healthier, wealthier, and more attractive city.

But bad habits are hard to break, and the 8 men and 1 woman responsible for maintaining the viability of this essential city utility are starting to pout and whimper, threatening to make “daddy” drag us all, once again, kicking and screaming. This time, however, they are taking us far too close to the edge of the precipice.

For if the council carries out its stated intention of leaving the sewer utility’s bonded debt in default, if it fulfills its threat to call our creditors’ and regulators’ collective bluff, New Albany will lose control of its sewers and its sewer rates. Perhaps some banker in Brussels or some bureaucrat in Boston will become the woman in charge of setting rates and directing projects. Who wants to guess how she’ll “fix” the problem?