Mayor Harry Wyant Jr. said the town needs extra money to keep the sewer plant running within state rules, despite objections from neighbors who use it.
Phillipsburg Town Council voted unanimously to raise its sewer rates tonight despite objections from neighboring communities that will have to pay more to use the town’s system.
Council hiked sewer rates by 2 percent.
Beginning July 1, Phillipsburg users will pay 46 cents for every 100 gallons of wastewater generated. Neighboring users, who are in Lopatcong, Pohatcong and Greenwich townships and Alpha, will pay 59 cents per 100 gallons of wastewater.
Phillipsburg Mayor Harry Wyant Jr. said officials from the neighboring towns renewed objections to the hike, but said the town needs the extra money to keep the Phillipsburg Wastewater Treatment Plan operating within state rules.
“Obviously no one wants to see an increase. But you’re trying to run a plant within the parameters of restrictive (New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection) regulations,” he said. “It’s gotta be pretty darn clean and that’s difficult.”
An engineering firm recommended Phillipsburg raise its sewer rate by 2 percent in each of five consecutive years to pay for an expansion of the sewer system, which is near 80 percent capacity.
Wyant said the town will set sewer rates on a year-by-year basis and that the hike approved tonight doesn’t guarantee future hikes.
The town has $1.2 million in an emergency sewer fund, but the engineers’ plan called for maintaining that surplus.
An Alpha official has said the expansion plan isn't well thought out. Officials in Pohatcong and Lopatcong have said their townships don’t have the type of new development that’s using up the plant’s remaining capacity.