April 11, 2012 THE VILLADOM TIMES III • Page 9 The Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority has hired an engineering firm to recommend work the authority can undertake to prevent “inflow & infiltration,” believed to be a major factor in skewed sewer charges. Allendale and Waldwick borough officials had separate meetings recently with representatives of the NWBCUA and its consulting engineer, Boswell Engineering, to discuss the scope of work to be performed by Boswell to help the two communities control their I&I. “Historical data indicates a significant variation in sewage flow per equivalent dwelling unit for the boroughs of Allendale and Waldwick,” Howard Hurwitz, NWBCUA’s executive director, wrote in setting up the meetings. “These two municipalities have significantly greater sewer flows than the average flows per EDU (equivalent dwelling unit) throughout the Authority’s tributary area.” Hurwitz said that sump pumping generally explained the pattern that his experts had observed and that he and the NWBCUA had reached out to both boroughs to work with them on solutions. Hurwitz said that as of last week, both communities had agreed to cooperate to study the problem and that he was satisfied with their good intentions. Waldwick, in particular, he said, had taken impressive preliminary steps to curtail excessive inflow and infiltration and that Allendale officials were also on board. NWBCUA will help towns with inflow & infiltration Last May Waldwick adopted a trailblazing ordinance banning sump pumps or other unauthorized connections from discharging into the sanitary sewer system and authorizing home inspections to assure compliance. Wyckoff adopted a similar ordinance soon thereafter. The new policy is expected to ultimately cut in half Waldwick’s $2 million annual sanitary sewer treatment bill, according to town officials. This year alone the NWBCUA’s bill was reduced by $116,800. Allendale hopes for positive results as well. “We are going forward with a program to try to identify infiltration. We will identify a specific neighborhood and check lines. Hopefully then we’ll move to other neighborhoods throughout town,” said Allendale Mayor Vince Barra. Waldwick Mayor Tom Giordano said his team had asked Hurwitz at the meeting for assistance in identifying another major contributor to high sewer costs for Waldwick: determining the actual flow generated within the community. He explained that although most of the flow coming into the Waldwick treatment plant is metered at the border, some flow from Allendale and Wyckoff bypasses the metering system and relies on assumptions to estimate Waldwick’s charges. But the assumption does not account for potential I&I from those two communities, he said, so the potential exists for the flow being vastly underestimated and thus contributing to Waldwick’s inflated numbers. “We asked them to install meters on a temporary basis where these flows come into Waldwick to either prove or disprove the assumptions that go into the calculation of our bill,” Giordano said. “If the numbers are understated, the calculation done by the authority on our bill would reflect that, and our gallonage would go down without us doing anything,” he added. Mayor Giordano said Hurwitz had promised a response to his request within a month’s time.