_{Thumbnail photo by James Brooks}

Two weeks after Crescent City councilors took the first step toward increasing water and sewer rates, City Manager Eric Wier attempted to quell concerns about the Proposition 218 protest process.

Wier also addressed the idea of moving the wastewater treatment plant from its current location at B and Battery streets to the area behind Safeway, which was once the McNamara & Peepe lumber mill site. The city manager said that was before he began working with the city, however a cost analysis determined that it would not be feasible.

“When you talk about relocating the treatment plant, it’s not just about picking up the treatment plant and moving it,” he said. “It’s all of the infrastructure that goes into the treatment plant that still goes into the location it’s at now.”

_{Thumbnail photo: Sewer rates for customers within Crescent City limits go toward the conveyance and treatment of their wastewater. | Photo by James Brooks}

Linda Sutter vowed to fight planned water and sewer rate increases, telling Crescent City councilors that she’ll be “pounding pavement and getting the signatures” to keep them from going through.

But City Manager Eric Wier corrected a statement Sutter made on Monday about the community’s low-income housing developments and what she said was the expectation that “everybody else who works or gets a decent wage (will) pay for all those people.”

Using Danco Communities’ Harbor Point Apartments as an example, Wier said the developers of the 26-unit senior apartment building paid more than $100,000 in sewer rate connections. The property owners will pay monthly sewer charges based on their water consumption, the city manager said.

“The individual might not be paying that directly because they don’t have an account individually, but that apartment complex does through a master meter,” he said. “The owner of the apartment complex pays that large bill for all those sewer connections. They absolutely pay their equitable fair share for that development.”