June 10, 2025
As qualifying starts for city elections in the City of Rainsville, Alabama. We wanted to remind the citizens of Rainsville what the current administration did to raise the citizens sewer bills astronomically. Below we will show an excerpt from our newspaper article from 2021, when the current council voted to tie your sewer bill to 100% usage of your water bill. Use 1,000 gallons of water, you are charged for 1,000 gallons of water going down your sewer pipe, even though all of it does not go down the sewer pipe. At the time this measure was passed, none of the council members were personally on sewer, except for Brandon Freeman. Freeman was the only member this increase personally affected. All the other council members were not personally on the city sewer and they did not personally have the pay the large increase.
Even though there is no way the city or waterboard can prove 100% of your water usage goes down the sewer, citizens are being charged a 100% match of their water usage, for their sewer bills. Your incoming water does have an actual meter that determines how much water you are actually using. Your sewer pipe leaving your home or business DOES NOT have a meter to measure what goes down your pipe.
So, if you water your lawn, your garden, wash your cars, fill your swimming pool, or any outdoor water usage, that water does not go down the sewer, but yet, you are being charged 100% as if every ounce of that water went down the sewer.
Example 1: Fill your swimming pool up with say 1,000 gallons of water. You pay the waterboard for that 1,000 gallons of water, then you pay the City of Rainsville for that 1,000 gallons of water going down the city’s sewer pipe. But the water never went down the sewer pipe, it is in your swimming pool.
Example 2: We have a dry Summer and you water your garden each day for month. You use 500 gallons of water on your garden during a month. You pay the waterboard for that 500 gallons of water, but then you also pay the City of Rainsville, at a 100% match rate, for that same water going down their sewer pipe. Problem is, that water went into your garden and into the ground, it never went into the sewer pipe.
At this point, the city and sewer system are making a “profit” off of its citizens. Because every ounce of water the city charges you for going down the sewer pipe, that actually never goes down the sewer, it a direct profit the city is making. This is also an undue burden on citizens, when everyone is already struggling to just make ends meet. When this enormous increase was put into place, citizens had no option to disconnect from the sewer and are forced to have to pay this huge increase. Once you are connected to the sewer, you cannot legally disconnect.
Excerpt from 2021 newspaper article:
The Rainsville City Council held its regular meeting on Monday, June 7, 2021. In the work session, it was stated that an agreement had been reached between the city and the Waterworks Water, Sewer & Gas Board of the Town of Section (WWSGBS) for them to start billing sewer customers for the City of Rainsville.
According to sources, this new billing system will cause a lot of sewer customer’s bills to skyrocket. Currently, Rainsville sewer customers are paying $22.00 a month for sewer service. If your water bill runs $26.38 a month or less, then your increase will be around a 20% increase, from $22.00 up to $26.38 a month. If you actually use water, then here is a break out of the new increase you will see.
Monthly Water bill Monthly Sewer bill increase
$26.38 or less 20% increase
$30.00 35% increase
$40.00 80% increase
$50.00 130% increase
$60.00 175% increase
$70.00 220% increase
This new billing system is going to be tied directly to how much water you use. So, if you use water to wash your car, water your lawn, plants or garden, fill your swimming pool, or use water for any outside use, you will pay for that on your sewer bill, even though that water never went into the sewer system.
