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P <br />CURRENT SEWER SYSTEH OPERATION <br />In the past three years, eight additional customers or <br />taps have been added to the original 109 taps for a total of <br />one hundred seventeen taps. Currently, only seventy -five of <br />these taps are in service or being used, while forty -two are <br />not used. Of the unused taps, thirty are for buildings which <br />have never connected to the sewer, three more taps are for <br />buildings which have not yet been built, and nine taps are <br />not in use because the buildings to which they are connected <br />are vacant. <br />The existing sewer system has a collection and pumping <br />capacity of 500,000 gallons per day or 15,000,000 gallons per <br />month. Currently, the system handles a total flow of roughly <br />450,000 gallons per month and produces a revenue from the <br />sewer use billings of $2500 per month. The system's <br />operating costs for waste treatment. maintenance, billing and <br />power have been averaging approximately $2400 per month. The <br />Town of Hillsborough, which provides treatment for the waste <br />collected in the Efland system, has just increased its waste <br />treatment rate charged to the Efland sewer system by twenty - <br />four percent. The increase in treatment cost represents a <br />$300 per month increase in the Efland system's operating <br />expenses. Even without considering the rise in treatment <br />costs. the Efland sewer system does not generate sufficient <br />revenue to repay the County's General Fund for the original <br />construction expenditures. Repayment of expenditures from <br />the General Fund, plus interest. is a condition of the Efland <br />sewer system's Rules of Operation, adopted by the Board of <br />County Commissioners in 1985. There are also insufficient <br />funds to set aside any monies for future replacement of <br />failed or worn out equipment or to make other major repairs. <br />When costs for future equipment repair and replacement and <br />for repayment of General Fund expenditures with interest are <br />included in the, existing system's operating expenses, the <br />monthly revenue shortfall is approximately $2400. One option <br />that will make the existing system become financially solvent <br />is to double the existing sewer rates. If the existing <br />system is to become comoletely self sufficient at the <br />e�xistina sewer r tes the existin system's customer base <br />will have to reach 280 households with a total sewer usage of <br />2-500,000 allons Per month. <br />Given the existing economic conditions in the Efland area, it <br />is not reasonable to anticipate that the customer base or the <br />sewer usage will grow to the extent necessary for the <br />existing system to reach a financial break -even point in the <br />foreseeable future. Considering that the present sewer rate <br />