2,100 Buffalo Grove households to get sewer fee rebates

Buffalo Grove residents who live in Lake County will be getting a letter in the mail from the village this week, with the latest news about rebates on their sewer bills, Finance Director Scott Anderson said.

This year, the village switched from a flat fee for sanitary sewer service to billing based on consumption.

The flat fee was based on an “assumed usage” rate based on average water use. Based on an average of 7,500 gallons of use per month, the flat charge was $30 per month — or $60 per billing cycle, since the bills come out every two months.

The idea, Anderson said, was to promote fairness in billing, since a lot of households don’t use 7,500 gallons a month. The village was also trying to promote conservation, he said.

What the village didn’t count on was a spike in the summer billing, with bills that incorporated the peak usage months of July and August resulting in a large spike in sewer fees, primarily for large outdoor water consumers, such as people with irrigation systems and swimming pools.

Bills for some of them based on a charge of $4 per 1,000 gallons skyrocketed to as much as nearly $800.

Anderson said the village has been working with Lake County officials, who supply the sewage treatment service and who get the revenue generated by the fee, to reach a compromise.

The county is allowing the village to apply credits to residents in the Lake County portion of Buffalo Grove for summer sewer usage and deduct the money from what’s sent to the county for the sewage fee.

According to the village, the credit will cap a resident’s sewer usage at 110 percent of the non-summer month’s average.

For example, if a resident’s average non-summer month consumption is 20,000 gallons, the most a resident would have to pay sewer fees on would be 22,000 gallons.

Many Lake County residents will see a rebate on their next bill reflecting the impact of the cap. Those Lake County residents who will receive their bill in October will have a credit posted, if warranted, reflecting the 110 percent cap. The rebates will impact 2,100 households, Anderson said.

For additional information, contact the village’s Finance Department at (847) 459-2500.