Drainage Department Privatized in New Albany, Ind.

A three-member city panel decided Friday morning that, effective Aug. 1, Environmental Management Corp. (EMC) will take control of the New Albany, Ind., drainage department.

City storm water board officials Tim Deatrick, Sam Asberry and Al Goodman agreed to a three-year, $507,000 a year contract with EMC. The management company plans to add five local maintenance jobs and one office position; the six workers being taken off the city's payroll are being offered these positions at their current salaries.

Two of these workers are currently paid from the drainage budget although they do not work for the department. The presence of their salaries in the drainage budget is a legacy of a once-combined sewer and drainage maintenance department.

"I think more than anything it was a business decision," said Deatrick, who added that the department has been "constrained" by having only three maintenance workers, all of whom lack a commercial driver's license.

City drainage workers have until Aug. 1 to determine whether they will take the EMC jobs, said the company's director of drainage operations, Brian Dixon.

Sewer board member and council president Larry Kochert, like many other New Albany officials, told The News and Tribune that he had heard nothing about the storm water privatization as of Friday. He was reluctant to weigh in without knowing more but said EMA, which is also the private contractor for the city's sewer utility, "does a good job" but is "pricey."

Source: The News and Tribune