A historic court settlement intended to eliminate illegal sewage discharges into the the county's rivers and streams will initially cost Metropolitan Sewer District customers $74 million, but could cost as much as $1 billion over the next several decades.

        Hamilton County commissioners voted Monday to make public a federal consent decree negotiated between sewer district lawyers and the U.S. Department of Justice over the past six years.

        Commissioners will hold a public hearing on Wednesday before they vote on whether to accept the proposed settlement. They risk a federal lawsuit if they reject the deal.

        Sewer district customers will foot the bills with annual 6 percent rate hikes if the decree is approved by the county, the Justice Department and a federal judge.

        The decree aims to eliminate so-called sanitary sewer overflows, which are points in the county's 3,000-mile sewer system where raw sewage discharges into the environment during heavy rain.

        Rain gets into the system through manhole covers and cracked pipes, filling them until they overflow into a creek or stream.

        There are more than 100 such overflows. The decree calls for the elimination of 17 of the most highly active overflows in the next five years. Those overflows have discharged raw sewage into the environment a combined 2,900 times since 1992.

        The decree also calls for a long-range evaluation of the system, which will be provided by a $14 million computer model of the sewer system being built, to find the best ways of eliminating the rest of the overflows.

        “It's a good plan, a good partnership,” Sewer District Director Pat Karney said Monday. “It also demonstrates the Feds' ability to see conditions facing us. Public utilities aren't like corporations. These changes will hit residents.”

        The decree handles one of the 17 highly active overflows differently.

        It's called sanitary sewer overflow 700 — a huge stretch of the system that has averaged 31 discharges per year.

        Expanding the pipe to stop discharges from that overflow would cost district ratepayers about $200 million alone, Mr. Karney said. A proposed deep tunnel under the Mill Creek is being considered to handle overflows from that pipe, but the tunnel won't be complete for at least 15 years — if the $800 million project is ever built.

        The sewer district has until 2016 to address the overflows from the 700 line, or they can find a solution by 2022 if they do not dig the tunnel. Either way, officials must build an interim treatment plant — at a cost of between $10 million and $15 million, and which must be finished by 2007 — to cut down on the number of discharges until a permanent solution is found.

        Glen Brand, a spokesperson for the Sierra Club, said the decree is lacking in many ways. The Sierra Club has given the county notice that it intends to sue over the discharges, and can file its lawsuit in federal court later this month.

        Mr. Brand said commissioners need to give the public more time to read the decree before commenting on it. Sierra Club lawyers have told the county they will not file the Sierra Club's lawsuit immediately if commissioners extend the public comment period.

        “We should be very careful that the solution we come up with will really solve the problem,” Mr. Brand said. “I don't think people, when they hear about this, will understand what the hurry is.”

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