In the movie “Forrest Gump” one of the truest sayings of all time was uttered while Forrest was on his three and a half year run. A guy had joined Forrest and was running after him saying, “Hey man! Hey listen, I was wondering if you might help me. I’m in the bumper sticker business and I’ve been trying to think of a good slogan, – WOAH! Man, you just ran through a big pile of dog *hit!” Forest replied, “It happens.” The Bumper Sticker Guy asks “What, *hit?” and Forrest said, “Sometimes.” According to the movie, as an acknowledgement of this universal truth the “*hit Happens” bumper sticker was born.
In terms of Branson and most other places, Forrest probably underestimated the situation when he said, “Sometimes” because, under normal circumstances, “It Happens” in just about every house, apartment, condo, hotel unit, and many other places in the Branson area tens of thousands of time a day. In fact, when coupled with the relief of bodily wastes in their liquid form, “It Happens” hundreds of thousands of times a day and with most such happenings there is an accompanying flush of a toilet causing the release of millions of gallons of sewage into the area’s sewage processing systems.
To a large extent, within the Cities of Branson and Hollister and those areas served by the Taney County Regional Sewer District, when “It happens” the patrons being served by those entities have the assurance of knowing when “It happens” all they have to do is flush and its gone.
With the flush, if all goes well, “It” and its accompanying sewage passes through the pipes of the place where “It” happened. Eventually, usually at the property line, “It” flows into a public sewage collection system for transportation to the nearest sewage treatment plant where “It” is treated to the point where it can be safely released into the environment.
As most patrons on publically funded sewer systems are finding out, even as there is “No free lunch” there is “No free flush.” The city of Branson is in the third year of a five year plan that has already raised sewer rates 45 percent and will raise them an additional 30 percent over the next two years. The city of Hollister is currently in the process of raising its sewer rates about six percent on it residential and business patrons, and the Taney County Regional Sewer District just voted to accept a 58 percent increase per 1000 gallons of sewage treated through Hollister’s treatment plant which will be reflected in the bills of their patrons in the near future.
Now here’s the bad news, that’s not the end of it, in fact there is no end of rate increases in sight for the immediate future. Why? “It happens” and when “It happens,” it costs money to process “It” and those costs are constantly escalating. Unfortunately, for too long and for whatever reasons, sewer patrons have been receiving artificially low rates that did not reflect or cover the actual operational costs of processing their sewage. The artificially low rates were made possible only because of subsidization from other budget areas such as the general fund, tourism taxes, capital improvements, and other funds.
To the best of an Ole Seagull’s knowledge, there is not one public sewage entity, even with the proposed rate increases, that will not have a significant operational deficit during the coming year. If systems can’t even raise enough to pay for their current operations how will they support the capital improvement costs necessary to simply maintain the basic infrastructure of the current systems, replace old sewer lines and build new plants, etc?
An Ole Seagull couldn’t possibly know but this he believes, elected leaders at all levels should have the honesty, courage, and fortitude to do what should have been done years ago, tell people, “It happens,” here’s what it costs to get rid of “It” and here’s what you pay to get rid of yours” It’s the “pay as you flush” variation of the “pay as you go” concept.
