HUNTINGTON -- Sewer rates for customers of the Huntington Sanitary Board could increase 76 percent over the next two years.

Huntington City Council is expected to begin discussions Monday on the rate hike that would be implemented in three phases. The increase is on the agenda as the first reading of an ordinance.

The council also is set to hear two ordinances on first reading that call for the establishment of a storm water utility and a $2 monthly storm water fee for single-family residences. All other properties would be charged $7 a month. The new fees would be in addition to the monthly sewer charge.

The average monthly bill for residential customers now (based on usage of 4,500 gallons) is $16.96. The average rate would increase to $22.13 a month 45 days after the enactment of the ordinance. It would then rise to $26.77 on July 1, 2009, and $29.92 on July 1, 2010.

The revenue generated from the sewer rate increase would go toward the initial phase of a long-term plan to renovate Huntington's sewer system.

About 85 percent of the city's sewer system, much of which is more than 100 years old, consists of lines that carry both storm water and sewage. The combined lines overflow during heavy rain, which prevents the Sanitary Board's wastewater treatment plant from treating the water. Instead, millions of gallons of untreated water flow into streams, rivers and basements and flood city streets.

The Environmental Protection Agency in the 1990s required communities to separate their systems. There are still 772 communities nationwide and 15 to 20 in West Virginia that have combined sewer systems, according to Strand Associates, a Wisconsin-based engineering firm that is assisting the board with its plan.

The initial phase of Huntington's long-term plan would cost $54.5 million and include four projects. Those include raising weirs, or small dam walls, within sewer lines to reduce river water backing up in the sewer system; upgrading pump stations; nearly doubling the treatment capacity of the Sanitary Board's wastewater plant near Westmoreland; and separating combined sewers in certain areas.

Mayor David Felinton, who is chairman of the Sanitary Board, said the proposed increase is out of touch with what residents can afford to pay. Felinton voted against the rate increase last month, while board members Jim Ashworth and Jack Klim voted for it.

"It's too drastic of an increase in general," he said. "We hear about what a good job (Klim and Ashworth) have been doing and keeping costs down, but they suddenly hit us with an increase that almost doubles what people are paying now."

Felinton said he will veto the rate increase if City Council eventually approves it.

Ashworth said the rate hike in its current form would bring the average residence's annual sewer bill to a level that represents 1.5 percent of household median income in Huntington. That is important because it would allow the Sanitary Board to qualify for federal and state low-interest loans and grants to help pay for improvements, he said.

Ashworth said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wanted the city to raise the rates to equal 2 percent of the household median income, but the state Department of Environmental Protection worked out a compromise. However, if the city does not act soon, the EPA could take legal action against the city and enforce its own rate structure, he said.

"If the DEP forces us, it may well come through their relationship with EPA, and the rate increase would be larger," Ashworth said. "I don't know that with certainty, but that's what we've been told."

Ashworth said there's a possibility that the Sanitary Board will ask City Council on Monday to delay the sewer rate and storm water ordinances.

"The Public Service Commission can review this rate increase if someone files a protest, and we're being told that's almost a certainty," he said. "We might want to delay it a bit and go a little further in preparing the justifying documents."

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