Monroeville Council comes to settlement agreement with ALCOSAN after violating contract for 27 years

A contract that never should have been entered into almost ended up costing Monroeville a huge sum of money.

The issue goes back to an agreement that the municipality signed in 1994 that broke an exclusive contract signed with ALCOSAN nearly 40 years earlier.

“The important thing to remember is for about 27 years we violated the agreement (with ALCOSAN),” township solicitor Robert Wratcher told council members. “What that meant was ALCOSAN didn’t get the sewage but they also didn’t get the revenue. Just in that area, without interest, it’s probably about $150,000 a year, which for 27 years works out to about $4 million. Add the interest that might be due, and it could be $7 or $8 million that they could demand, and, quite frankly, I don’t know how the municipality would not be on the hook for a substantial amount of that money if they were to demand that.”

Instead, Monroeville Council voted unanimously at its Aug. 10 meeting to approve a deal with ALCOSAN that will have them pay $159,000 instead of the millions they potentially could have owed. There were no representatives from ALSOSAN at the meeting.

The issue stems from an original contract between Monroeville and ALCOSAN — or the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority — dating back to 1955. Under the terms, ALCOSAN would exclusively treat and dispose of all the sewage generated within the municipality.

However, a section of Monroeville bordering Murrysville, including some homes along Shangri La Drive, is situated in such a way that sewage can’t flow back toward ALCOSAN’s system without intervention.

“So what happened for many years was the municipality, at some expense and inconvenience, had pump stations that would pump the sewage uphill, over the top of the hill, and drain it into the ALCOSAN system,” Wratcher explained.

In 1994, however, municipal officials realized the sewage from that area could flow naturally into the Franklin Township Municipal Sanitary Authority in Murrysville.

“So without speaking with ALCOSAN, for whatever reason, Monroeville entered into an agreement with Franklin Township Municipal Sanitary Authority and those properties’ sewage started flowing down into the Franklin Township plant,” Wratcher said.

That happened for nearly 25 years until a few years ago when the owners of Murrysview Shoppes, along Plaza Drive and Route 22, approached ALCOSAN about joining in on the agreement with the other Monroeville properties that sent their waste to Franklin Township.

The fact that sewage from any part of Monroeville went anywhere other than ALCOSAN was news to ALCOSAN.

The sewer authority and municipality have been in talks to remedy the situation ever since. ALCOSAN ultimately proposed that if Monroeville pays the $159,000, split into three payments over the next three years, they will consider the agreement to be in compliance and amend the service agreement so that the properties in question are no longer part of their exclusive service area.

“Basically it’s a substantial liability in the millions that the municipality can settle for $159,000,” Wratcher said. “Nobody knows why Monroeville didn’t contact ALCOSAN when they did this with FTSA back in 1994. Obviously, it was none of you here now. So that’s the essence of the agreement, and we’ve been working to come to some agreement with ALCOSAN and this is the result. I think it’s a very reasonable settlement.”