First Step a Stumble

Randy Shoemaker, the director of Leesburg's water and sewer department recently recommended to the Leesburg Town Council a cost-sharing concept of a dual-service sewer line. The idea received luke-warm reception from the Council. To me this sounded like a great first step to my "Water Balloon" article. I respect Randy’s opinions, even though he did not leap on my “balloon”, the suggestion of merging the Leesburg utility department with Loudoun County Sanitation Authority. LCSA provides identical services to Loudoun County, but Randy and I have not had an opportunity to sit down and discuss the idea fully.

Randy told the Council, "It would allow the town to recapture some of the $15 million it has already invested in building plant components to handle an eventual expansion to 10 mgd."

Part of this $15 million investment was to allow the Town to service the proposed Meadowbrook development. After a nasty battle three years ago, that rezoning application was been withdrawn. So now the Town has nowhere to go with its expanded sewer - except Crosstrail and Ridgewater Park. But wait! These developments are not in the Town but in the County. They could have been within the Town, but Mayor Umstattd and her supporters on the Council killed the annexation plan several years ago. Now Umstattd wants Leesburg to have exclusive rights to provide water and sewer to Crosstrail. Kelly Burke led the fight for the Council last summer to stall Crosstrail until the Town could annex the property.

Leesburg Today reports Umstattd saying, "I've had concerns about this since the very beginning, I just cannot imagine that this is a good use of our capacity."

Where in the world does she think she is going to use it? After Meadowbrook there is not a single large piece of land in the Town to develop, and the Council has killed this opportunity.

This debate should prove interesting to the homeowners who recently saw a 100% rate increase in their bills from the Town for water and sewer because they live across the Town line in the County. These homeowners are suing the Town. One of the Town’s defenses is that rates must be increased because of increasing costs, and the majority of these costs must be passed on to non-residents.