STEUBENVILLE — The Jefferson County commissioners are going to front their sewer department the money needed to cover a debt service payment due in less than two weeks, though at this point they’re not sure if it will be a loan or if they’ll have to “eat it.”

Water and Sewer District Director Mike Eroshevich said during Thursday’s meeting that the payment, totaling just over $250,000, is due April 1, but the sewer fund “cannot facilitate this payment and continue operations.”

Eroshevich cited inflation and the sheer number of projects they’ve taken on during the past decade as the culprits, but included correspondence from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in which Ohio District IV Director Brent Warren “noted several concerns that need attention,” including a high number of delinquencies and a 2024 budget for sewer systems that includes “a $403,903 loss projection.”

“It appears there are sufficient funds in the reserve account to make this payment, however, it will deplete the funds and that will require monthly payments to bring the reserve funds back to fully funded,” Warren had written. “This again will cause additional strain on the annual budget. Using short-lived assets from Jefferson sewer is not the option.”

Commissioner Dave Maple said they’ve “known for a while” the sewer budget is tight.

“We’ve seen a lot of increases in sewer costs and not much increase in revenue,” he said.

Due to contractor shortages and spiraling costs, Amsterdam residents were slow to connect to their new sewer system, and roughly 150 still haven’t been tied into the system. Those customers will start being billed in April, whether they are connected or not.

“Two things are going to happen there,” Maple said. “(Those residents) are going to get a bill, then the board of health is going to start its enforcement (activities.)”

Maple characterized the sewer department’s cash concerns as something of a cash flow issue, and said the department’s inability to cover the $251,000 debt service payment “doesn’t mean the sewer department is working in the negative, but it’s working so tight that there’s not a bucket of money there to make this big payment. So, we’re going to move some other permissive money over to make the payment while we investigate whether it needs to be a loan and repaid by the sewer department or if it can just be paid and be done with it.”

Eroshevich said with facilities spread across the county, his department “is at the point now where almost half our revenue goes to debt service, about a million dollars a year.”

“Look at other communities,” he said. “Steubenville has more than twice the customers with one plant, though it’s significantly larger. We have eight plants, they’re scattered, so you have to have personnel to run all of them.”

“I always say, we have 18 water tanks for the same number of customers,” Commissioner Tony Morelli said. “They (currently) have two.”

Eroshevich warned commissioners they have another debt service payment coming up in a few months, but they told him they’d prefer to address the current crisis first.

Commissioner Eric Timmons, meanwhile, said reliable sewer and water service is essential to growth.

“I think it goes back to showing our infrastructure needs work,” Timmons said. “How we get there is yet to be determined, but nobody’s going to want to come to communities with bad water systems and bad sewers. It’s something we have to work on.”

Commissioners also approved the Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District’s municipal separate storm sewer report for 2023, an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Stormwater Phase II program mandate and accepted a recommendation that they purchase a new Ford F-250 truck with an animal control body from Iowa’s New Way Ford for $78,567.

They also welcomed Hancock County Commissioner Eron Chek, who said it’s important that leaders on both sides of the Ohio River work together.

“Issues that affect us affect you,” she said.