SOUTHWICK — Select Board members will vote at their next meeting this month on a plan to raise the sewer billing rates in Southwick after the city of Westfield, to which Southwick’s sewer is connected, raised its own.

Westfield’s City Council voted in December to raise the city’s sewer rates by 10 percent to prevent the Water Commission from needing to dip into the general fund. Southwick has an intermunicipal agreement with Westfield that connects their sewer systems, and for which Southwick pays Westfield.

Select Board member Russell Fox said during the June 13 Select Board meeting that it is likely the board will vote to raise the rates for Southwick at its next meeting.

Select Board member Doug Moglin said one of the problems with Southwick’s sewer system is that not enough residents and businesses are hooked up to it. The infrastructure is built out into many neighborhoods in Southwick, but some residents who have access to the sewer system if they want to have instead opted for individual septic systems.

Fox said that the development of the sewer system in Southwick was originally conceived to keep Congamond Lake cleaner by implementing the system in neighborhoods surrounding the lake.

“The original idea was to sewer the area around the lake because of nutrients and contamination that was going into the lake,” said Fox.

Southwick and Westfield are set to renegotiate the sewer agreement between the two communities before October 2023, and he said he hopes Southwick can then get a better deal.

The current sewer billing rate in Southwick is $9.25 per 1,000 gallons of water, of which $5.17 is paid to Westfield. Southwick Public Works Director Randy Brown said that, on a rough average, Southwick residents pay about $150 to $200 in every six-month billing cycle.

Brown said that the fiscal year 2023 payment to Westfield will rise to $5.58 per 1,000 gallons, and in fiscal year 2024 it will increase sharply to $7.52. The rate that Southwick pays to Westfield is always the rate charged to commercial users in the city, plus 10 percent.

The rates paid by Southwick consumers include the Westfield charge, plus additional funds the Department of Public Works needs to maintain the pipes and pumps in Southwick, and to administer the water system.

The rate for Southwick residents and business is expected to increase, but neither Fox nor Moglin could say yet by how much. The agenda item was tabled to the next meeting to give the two, and fellow Select Board member Jason Perron, time to review the situation and think about how they want to proceed.

Moglin said June 17 that Southwick learned a lesson a lot of communities seem to learn the hard way in regard to sewer. Southwick’s system is set up so that the sections built during phase 1 of the sewer build-out are owned by the town forever. He said the problem with that is that the equipment needed to run and maintain the sewer lines ages and requires replacement.

“Every town eventually realizes that it is a spiraling cost forever as equipment ages and dies,” said Moglin.

For phase 2, the homeowners with sewer connections were given responsibility for the portions of the system on their properties.

The town had also paid for the design work to build sewer connections to the neighborhoods of Fernwood Road and Birchwood Road across from the school campus. The design work cost the town $600,000, but residents voted it down at the 2015 Annual Town Meeting.

The same thing happened on Congamond Road, where the town paid for design work to implement a sewer, but it was voted down by residents at the Town Meeting.

Moglin acknowledged that there are some benefits to individual septic systems, but they are limited when on smaller lots, like a lot of residences. He said they also are far from permanent.

“With septics, it is never if, it is when,” said Moglin.

He said Southwick is in preliminary discussions with the town of Suffield, CT, to possibly have neighborhoods there tie into Southwick’s sewer system, which he said could further benefit the lake.

Moglin said he is unsure how high the sewer rate will be raised. He said he knows it will not be doubled, but that he thinks it could be raised by at least 10 percent.