Residents in Williamson have filed a petition with the Public Service Commission that should prompt a review of the city's water and sewer operations.
The petition, which was signed by roughly 921 customers, comes less than a month after the Williamson City Council voted to raise water rates for customers by more than 50 percent in order to cover a $1.2 million debt to Veolia Water, the private company that manages the city's water and sewer system.
That rate change, which would increase the average residential bill by more than $16 a month, prompted outrage in the small city located on the West Virginia-Kentucky boarder.
With the petition receiving signatures from around 54 percent of the customers in Williamson - far more than 25 percent needed to prompt an investigation - the PSC staff should now be able to review the utility board's accounting records and conduct a true cost-of-service analysis.
The PSC review could help Williamson solve two of the primary causes of the city's debt to Veolia, and would allow the utility regulatory agency to check up on the municipal water system for the first time since the 1980s.
According to records from the PSC and the Federal District Court of Eastern Kentucky, much of the $1.2 million debt owed to Veolia can be traced back to rate increase approved in 2007 that were never fully implemented and a court injunction from the late 1990s that froze water resale rates for the Mountain Water District in Kentucky at 1980 price levels.
The failure to implement those rate increases and to effectively challenge the federal court rulings led the utility board to come up short in its payments to Veolia, according to city officials.
Nobody from the city could explain why the water rates approved in 2007 were not put into effect, but the million-dollar debt owed to Veolia caused many in the city to blame Mayor Steve Knopp, who led the utility board.
Knopp has said that he only found out about the debt after being appointed as mayor in 2014, after the city's previous mayor, Darrin McCormick, was charged with federal crimes.
The Mingo County Public Service District had also filed complaints with the PSC, but because of recent changes to the state's utility laws, the service district wasn't able to initiate an investigation into the rates on its own.
Reach Andrew Brown at andrew.brown@wvgazette.com, 304-348-4814 or follow @Andy_Ed_Brown on Twitter.