Request By:
Sidney H. Hulette, Esq.
107 S. Morgan Street
P.O. Box 419
Morganfield, Kentucky 42437
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Thomas R. Emerson, Assistant Attorney General
This is in reply to your letter raising a question about a water district. Presumably the water district was organized pursuant to KRS Chapter 74.
You state that the water district has a computerizedbilling system for its customers. A separate and distinct sewage district has been established in the city of Waverly, located in the northern part of the county. The city has asked the water district to handle its billing on a fee basis.
Your question asks:
"Can the Union County Water District handle the billing for a separate utility district located in the county; and, if so, what authority grants such action?"
At the outset we direct your attention to KRS 96.940 which provides as follows:
"Any sewer body and any water supplier may enter into a contract relating to any of the provisions of KRS 96.930 to 96.943. Such contract may provide that the water supplier shall furnish to the sewer body copies of its records, or that the water supplier will compute sewer charges for the sewer body. Howeve, no such contract shall render nugatory the right of a sewer body, to order water suppliers to terminate water service to any premise, provided such authority has been delegated to the sewer body by the city."
While a water district organized pursuant to KRS Chapter 74 would be a water supplier under the above-quoted statute, we cannot determine from the limited information you have furnished whether the sewer system is a "sewer body" as that term is defined in KRS 96.931. Your letter refers to a sewer district but you also mention a city and its billing for sewer services. Thus we do not know the statutory provisions pursuant to which the sewer system was organized and presently functions.
KRS 96.931 sets forth the definitions for various terms used in KRS 96.930 to 96.943 and "sewer body" is defined in KRS 96.931(c) as follows:
"'Sewer body' means the body vested with responsibility for the control, operation, and maintenance of a city's sewer facilities, which may be the governing body or board, commission, or agency, created by statute or by city ordinance, or a private person, performing such functions under lawful contract with the city;"
If, for example, the sewer system with which you are concerned is a sanitation district organized under the provisions of KRS Chapter 220, then such a district probably cannot utilize the provisions of KRS 96.940 to contract with the water district as it is not a municipal utility. Furthermore, in
Stierle v. Sanitation District No. 1, Ky., 243 S.W.2d 678 (1951), the court said that a sanitation district cannot pursuant to a contract collect charges from others than the users of its system.
Therefore, it is our opinion that the sewer system with which you are concerned and the water district could, pursuant to KRS 96.940, contract for the collection of the sewer system's charges by the water district if the sewer system is a "sewer body" as defined by KRS 96.931(c).