Signal Mountain residents got more details Tuesday on an $8 fee that will begin appearing on their water bills within the next three months.

The fee, which will be paid for the next 20 years, is set to fund inspections and then repairs to pipes that connect homes to the city’s sewage lines, said Henry Hoss, chairman of the Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority.

The piping is actually a homeowner’s responsibility, Mr. Hoss said, but his agency believes 50 percent or more homes have cracked and leaky pipes. The water authority’s board voted last week to charge the fee.

The authority is going to pay for the repairs up front with loans, getting its money back through the $8 fee. Signal Mountain residents get their water bills quarterly, so they will actually pay $24 every three months.

About 24,000 water customers in Signal Mountain, Red Bank, East Brainerd and Lookout Mountain will pay the same fee, but Signal Mountain will be the first to have its pipes repaired, Mr. Hoss said.

About 30 residents attended Tuesday’s meeting. Though many asked questions, no one indicated direct opposition to the fee, perhaps because water authority officials estimate that repairing the pipes might cost homeowners $3,000 to $5,000 each, said Signal Mountain resident Norma Witherspoon.

“I was relieved... I know my line is unusually long,” said Ms. Witherspoon, who’s lived on the mountain for 46 years. “And mine would have been a $5,000 repair if something was wrong. I’m not wild about paying ($8 a month), but it makes sense.”

The repairs hope to reduce the swell of sewage that sometimes flows into the Tennessee River from Signal Mountain and move the town out of violation with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

“On a normal day, the Signal Mountain Sewage Treatment Plant gets about 250,000 gallons of sewage,” Mr. Hoss said. “But when there is a rain event, it goes up to over 3 million gallons.”

When all that sewage comes into the plant, it overwhelms the facility and the excess must be dumped into the Tennessee River with only partial treatment, Mr. Hoss said. Such dumping placed Signal Mountain in violation with state environmental policy and prompted a $275,000 fine against the town last year.

After replacing the pipes owned by the city over recent years, water authority engineers believe leaks in the underground pipes that run from homes to city sewer lines are contributing about 60 percent of the influx.

Once the water authority has repaired the homeowner pipes, Signal Mountain will close its sewage treatment center and begin contracting with the city of Chattanooga, Mr. Hoss said. That should happen in about two years, he said.

The town turned over its wastewater operation to the county water authority in 2003.

Signal Mountain Mayor Paul Hendricks praised the plan and the proposed fee.

“This is everybody’s problem,” Mr. Hendricks said. “One reason we voted for it was because the cost is being spread across all of the rate payers.”

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