LITTLE ROCK — Little Rock police are investigating how participants were chosen for a pilot sewer-line-replacement study after two city directors received free work on their sewer lines from the Little Rock Wastewater Utility.
Utility spokesman John Jarratt said the agency sought volunteers for the pilot program by advertising it on the utility’s website and the city’s website. It also paid $1,800 to advertise in the Arkansas Times.
When volunteers didn’t come in as quickly as utility officials had hoped, the utility’s rate advisory committee - a 19-member citizen committee - made personal recommendations, sent letters and made phone calls to certain neighborhood associations looking for more volunteers, Jarratt said.
Utility chief executive Reggie Corbitt volunteered his sewer line, his neighbor’s sewer line and both of his sons’ sewer lines for the program, which provided services valued at an average of $1,027 per residence.
The utility conducted the study in 2009-10 to produce a service-line inspection plan aimed at reducing the amount of rainwater and groundwater that flows into city sewers.
The program led to a $1 monthly service fee approved by the city directors this month that will be added to residential bills starting in January.
The service line is the pipe that connects a home or business with the utility’s main sewer line. Replacing a broken line or leaking one can cost thousands of dollars.
Among the 55 study participants on the list are at-large City Director Joan Adcock and Ward 3 City Director Stacy Hurst, several Wastewater Utility employees and their family members, and a number of prominent Little Rock residents, including a former U.S. senator, a former regional president of Regions Bank, real-estate executives, public-relations representatives and lawyers.
The utility operates as a semi autonomous governmental entity but must seek approval from the Little Rock Board of Directors to increase rates or fees for customers.
This month, city board members, including Hurst and Adcock, approved a graduated rate increase for all customers and the service fee for residential customers.
Little Rock police spokesman Terry Hastings said the investigation into the pilot study came about after information was gathered in an earlier investigation requested by the city manager’s office into a $24,000 payment that the utility made to the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of a former employee.
City Manager Bruce Moore denied giving police any information about the study when he requested the investigation into the IRS payment.
Utility officials said the payment was a payroll mistake made during a severance agreement settlement with the former employee.
Hastings said the investigation is still open, and no charges had been filed as of Tuesday.
NEEDED VOLUNTEERS
Participants in the sewerline study were promised free inspections of their sewer lines, which are the homeowners’ responsibility to maintain up to the sewer mains, according to the utility staff.
Participants also were promised free back-flow preventers, which prevent leaks from the sewer main back into the homeowners’ lines or houses, and free double clean outs, which are pipe fittings that allow access to flush the lines for inspections or other purposes.
“I was surprised at the trouble we had getting peopleto volunteer for the pilot program,” Jarratt said.
“Part of the issue is we needed a very specific set of volunteers because we wanted to have a sampling from sewer lines that were within different age ranges. Several of the people on the list, we approached and asked for permission to include their homes.”
The average cost of the inspection and installation of the two promised add-ons in 2009 was $1,027 per house, according to utility records, but the costs could be higher for some houses because of longer or deeper sewer lines.
Utility staff members estimated the inspection cost at $250 to $300 each. Each backflow-preventer cost was estimated at $240 with labor, and the clean-out with installation costs at $552 each.
A handful of representatives from different Little Rock plumbing companies surveyed this week, estimated the rarely requested back-flow-preventer costs at between $200 and $300 with labor.
The plumbers all said they regularly receive calls to install clean-outs and the costs differed greatly. Estimates for a clean-out installed near at house were $350 to $400, and if installed at the sewer main $1,200 to $1,600.
The pilot program and subsequent sewer-line plan were aimed at reducing the flow of rainwater and groundwater into sewer lines, which cause sewage overflows. Utility staff members have said problems with sewer lines account for about 40 percent of the overflow problems that the utility has been directed to correct as part of the settlement of a 2001 lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club.
The pilot study produced four options for the sewer-line plan, but they were scrapped at the suggestion of city officials in favor of the $1 service fees.
The fees will be pooled to reimburse residents up to $2,500 if they are required to replace broken sewer lines starting next year. The utility staff is still working on criteria for determining when a sewer line must be replaced.
Adcock said Tuesday that she and her husband, Jack, volunteered for the pilot study because the utility had not received many volunteers from the southwest Little Rock area.
“They had not received but 30 volunteers, and they needed 50, so I told them they could use our house,” Adcock said. “They didn’t have many people in southwest Little Rock, and our soil is different and the age of our lines and the problems we have with the sewer lines is unique, and I wanted to make sure someone in southwest was included in the study. I asked plenty of my neighbors to get involvedtoo.”
Adcock said she did not feel the need to declare the service as a gift on her financial-interest statement because all volunteers were given the same services.
“The program was opento everyone, and they needed volunteers in this area,” she said. “I had assumed they had received a grant or something to do the study. As a board member, I wanted to know exactly what they were doing, and being involved seemed to be the best way to know that.”
A spreadsheet of volunteers and study results obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette shows that Adcock’s sewer line had failed inspection and needed to be replaced or repaired. Adcock said she did not remember receiving a recommendation from the utility and has not hired a private plumber to work on the line since the pilot study.
According to work orders obtained through Arkansas Freedom of Information Act requests, the work done at Adcock’s Mabelvale Pike residence included installation of a back-flow preventer and a “service line repair.” A materials list for the repair showed that the technicians installed the clean-out but did not replace or repair the sewer line.
Hurst’s husband, Howard Hurst, said the utility approached them to do work on what he thought was a public sewer line when he and his wife were having a different sewer concern. He said he did not remember workers mentioning that his home would be included in the pilot study.
Howard Hurst said Tuesday that he didn’t want the utility workers to install a back-flow preventer on the sewer line in the alley behind his Country Club Lane address.
“We had called them because we have a manhole on our property, in our yard, and it had started to overflow. And we thought it was a problem on their end,” Hurst said. “The utility worker who came out told us the issue was our sump pump and we would have to take care of that privately, which we paid to do.”
Hurst said that while the workers were inspecting the overflow problem, they asked to inspect what he thought was a public sewer line. He said they told him that there was no clean-out on that line and that they had to install a back-flow preventer because of the placement of the house at the end of the street.
“I don’t remember anyone mentioning a study,” he said. “I fought them on it because I really didn’t want them digging around where all of our utilities were if they didn’t have to.”
Utility work orders showed that crews installed a back-flow preventer but had trouble locating a portion of the line, so the line could not be inspected using a camera.
“We did not do any repair work to the sewer lines once the inspections were done,” Jarratt said. “We don’t even have the people on staff to have the expertise to complete all of the work. We did provide the volunteers with recommendations and with a list of approved contractors if repairs were deemed necessary.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/27/2012