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The Grand Traverse County septage treatment facility has dealt with financial hurdles since the day it was built. The situation may get worse before it gets better. They may soon be loosing one of their biggest customers. A viewer wondered how big a loss it would be and the impact such a loss would have. The answer is the subject of this Fact Finder.

Grand Traverse County Commissioner Beth Friend sits on a finance sub committee for the county's septage treatment facility. She is quick to point out that "the waste coming to the septage treatment facility has been a beneficial relationship both for Bay Harbor and for the septage treatment facility. Bay Harbor needed a place to dispose of the waste and the septage treatment facility was able to accommodate that and gain the revenues from that waste stream."

But that relationship between CMS, the company paying for the clean up of cement-kiln-dust contaminated water at Bay Harbor, and the Grand Traverse septage treatment facility may be close to coming to an end. Commissioner Friend explains "they obviously have a large economic incentive not to pay to truck it down here and to find another method of disposal."

And that other method of disposal that could save CMS hundreds of thousands of dollars may come in the form of a deep injection well in Emmet County. The company has filed the paperwork with the DEQ to drill one in Resort Township. If approved the nearby well would save CMS money but slash revenue for the Grand Traverse County owned plant. According to Commissioner Friend "well obviously that would bet he loss of the revenues from that special waste stream, and they would be in a deficit, they would have a real cash flow problem with the septage treatment facility."

So how much money and waste are we talking about here? CMS sent down the first trucks in October of 2006 with about 69 thousand gallons of waste in the first month. Fast forward to October of 2009, when, in one just that one month, more than 2 million gallons of Bay Harbor water came to the plant. At the current rate, CMS pays the county $0.03 per gallon. According to Friend, the numbers add up quickly, "it's very significant and its revenues of about 600 and 700 thousand dollars a year for the fiscal year 2009."

In fact, over the past year in any given month, CMS waste has accounted for more than 70% of the total waste brought to the facility. The other 30% comes from household septic and holding tanks. Those numbers are a concern to some county commissioners like Friend who says "Well I think that we are all concerned about it. Without the special waste we're looking at deficits of 6 figures, so absolutely we have to look to solve the problems."

So the county maybe loosing 700,000 dollars in revenue from a plant that is projecting a deficit through at least 2014 and that's with some revenue coming from CMS. If they loose them as a customer does that mean the rest of us will have to make up the lost revenue? According to Friend, that may not be a long term solution to what has been a long standing problem. As she see it, "even if you charge users more money then what they are charging now, and you keep volume consistent they would still have a deficit on top of that not realistic, because as you charge more obviously people are going to demand less of the service, so your gallons are going down and your revenue along with it."

Commissioner Friend says they have started a review of the construction and complete operation of the septage facility. She says the commission will wait to get those results before determining what the next step could be. It's a step that could include going to voters to ask for a special assessment. The key she says, is finding some sort of sustainable and constant revenue in order to make ends meet.

So would you be willing to pay more to make up for the loss of the CMS revenue? Does the facility need to be able to cover its own costs or is it an essential service that should be subsidized by the county? How much more would you be willing to pay?

Let me know. Leave your thoughts below.