Property owners looking to hook up to Jim Thorpe Borough’s water or sewer system will have to dig deeper in their pockets following a fee schedule approved by council last week.

Acting on a fee study completed by Keystone Alliance Consulting, council set the fee to connect to its water system at $23,495 and $11,715 to hook up to its sewer system. The rates are up from $1,000 and $3,500 respectively.

“It has been 30 years since we changed the water connection fee and over 20 years since the sewer fee was updated,” Council President Greg Strubinger said. “This only impacts someone who wants to come in and hook on to the systems. It is not retroactive in any way to customers we already have. It is an infrequent thing. We have seen about 10, or maybe less, connections over the last decade.”

Strubinger said the borough has invested a lot of money in its water and sewer systems recently and the fees help to offset those improvements.

“We’re very fortunate that we have borough owned plants,” Strubinger said. “A lot of areas have privatized their water and sewer systems and have seen rates spike as a result. We’re lucky we have a good crew to maintain our facilities.”

Ed Gula, who recently retired as head of the borough’s sewer department, outlined a recent project where the extra income could have come in handy.

“Last year we got a quote to repair six or seven manholes,” Gula said. “The contractor’s price was roughly $14,000. There wasn’t any extra money in the budget. If you had a new connection right now, it would be money to go to that type of a project without increasing rates to all your customers.”

The other fee enacted last week had to do with the borough’s on-lot sewage management program. In June, the borough put in place a program that requires anyone with an on-lot septic system to have the tank pumped at least once every three years or whenever an inspection reveals that the septic tank is filled with solids or with scum in excess of one-third of the liquid depth of the tank, whichever comes first. The hauler/pumper must also complete a system inspection at the time of pumping.

Residents must choose a hauler/pumper who has been licensed by the borough.

“The fee council adopted sets the cost for that hauler/pumper license at $50,” Borough Manager Maureen Sterner said.

Strubinger said the impetus behind the program was to avoid having the responsibility of failing systems fall on the borough.

“The Department of Environmental Protection mandates some of these things on the borough, for lack of a better word,” he said. “Quite a number of years ago, there were some failing systems in the Switchback Ridge development. DEP had come in and inspected the systems and required the borough to provide community sewage to that development.”