pay a monthly sewer fee <\/a>of $61.46, with $42.03 going to the King County wastewater treatment fund and $19.43 to the city sewer fund. About 13 percent of the revenue goes to the city general fund. Single-family residents pay $37.25 per month for water.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m on the council and I\u2019m still not sure where that money goes and that makes me nervous, especially when we are talking about raising rates,\u201d said Councilman Jim Berrios, who added he shared Ralph\u2019s concerns about so much money from water and sewer funds going to the general fund.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
If the council reduces the amount of sewer and water monies going to the general fund, it would need to determine where to cut the general fund.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
City staff told the council if sewer rates were raised 15 percent the cost would jump to $64.37 per month, which would put Kent\u2019s rate higher than Soos Creek Water & Sewer and the city of Newcastle, but lower than the cities of Auburn, Renton and Tukwila.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The higher rate would bring in another $1 million per year for capital projects.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Not all Kent residents receive water and sewer service from the city.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Soos Creek Water & Sewer, the Midway Sewer District and the Highline Water District are other providers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tim LaPorte, city public works director, said it costs $2 million to $3 million to replace a sewer pump station.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kent has eight pump stations. Three of the pump stations need to be replaced. Pump stations usually last 25 to 30 years, he said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The pump stations send the sewage into the King County line that treats sewage at a Renton treatment facility before it goes into the Puget Sound.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they fail, we have poop all over the place and an ecological disaster,\u201d LaPorte said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The city has 211 miles of sewer pipe. About 70 miles of that pipe is more than 40 years old and needs to be replaced, LaPorte said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It would cost about $3.5 million to replace the 40 miles of pipe.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The city also needs to spend about $2.5 million on water main replacements; $2 million on reservoirs; $1 million on hydrants, meters and vaults; and $500,000 on other system plans and conservation costs.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure there will be more data coming forward and we will be looking at ways to rectify the problem,\u201d Council President Bill Boyce said.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The city of Kent\u2019s got a messy problem with no clear answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12989"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}