Getting Started

The type of rates to be charged would bring the next round of controversy and the next court challenges. There were two major possibilities: a flat fee for each property, based on the property’s size and use; or user fees, based on the amount of water discharged into the sewers.

The Board decided that user fees would be better. And because it would be difficult to measure directly the amount of water each property discharged into the sewers, the user fees would be based on the consumption shown on the Louisville Water Company’s water bills. The water company would collect the sewer fee along with the water bill, turning the proceeds over to MSD.

The first proposal was for a sewer fee that was half the amount charged by the water company at that time. This brought howls of protest from commercial laundries and distilleries, who used huge amounts of water. As a compromise, the Board added volume discounts for large users. It also added a 33 1/3 percent discount for all users who paid their bills promptly.

There was also the matter of the $17 million in outstanding sewer bonds, which the new sewer district did not take over from the City of Louisville. City taxpayers’ money would be used to pay off these bonds for years to come, leading some city opponents to charge that the fees amounted to "double taxation."

The water company’s own rate schedule provided a political solution to this. The water company, totally owned by the city, charged users outside the city twice as much as those inside the city. At 50 percent of the current water rates, MSD’s charges would also be twice as high outside the city, where customers wouldn’t be paying taxes to retire the old sewer bonds.

There were further, more intricate problems. The St. Matthews business district had formed its own sewer district and had built its own sewers in the 1930s, and had paid the City of Louisville to connect with its system. Its customers protested the new fees.

Strathmoor Village and Strathmoor Manor had also built their own sewer systems, and had contracted with the City of Louisville to connect with its sewers for an annual fee. Residents, who were charged by their own cities for sewer service, objected to paying additional fees.

Several large industries outside the city limits also protested paying the higher "county" rates.

All of these issues went to court, and wouldn’t be settled until early 1948. While lower courts often ruled in favor of the protesters, higher courts ruled mostly in favor of MSD. Higher rates outside the city were approved. The St. Matthews business district customers would have to pay city rates. The Strathmoor contracts would remain in effect until they expired in 1961; after that, residents would pay full MSD rates. And the major industries outside the city would have to pay the higher county rates.

On July 1, 1947, the new sewer charges went into effect, and soon attracted opposition in the political arena. In early 1948, a Louisville alderman proposed cutting the rate to 25 percent of the water bill. Two Louisville state senators introduced bills in the legislature to take away the MSD Board’s power to set rates, and to put the district under the direct control of the mayor. All these efforts failed, and the new rates continued in effect.

At the end of February, 1948, the Louisville Water Company reported the results: for more than three-fourths of the city’s residents, sewer charges were less than one dollar per month, and for seven percent of them, the charge was only 29 cents a month. The sewer-rental charges were raising about $1.4 million a year.

A Taste Of The Future: Septic Tanks And St. Matthews

St. Matthews learned a quick and ugly lesson about the problem with septic tanks. It was a lesson that would repeat itself many times in high density developments throughout Jefferson County: septic tanks are not a satisfactory solution for treating sewage in the Louisville area.

The unincorporated community of St. Matthews grew rapidly after the 1937 flood; hundreds of families built new homes in what was promoted as "high, dry land . . . with city conveniences . . . and low taxes."

These new homes used septic tanks to dispose of their sewage, as the early settlers had used in the past.

In a septic tank system, wastewater is routed to a large underground tank, where the waste decomposes and settles to the bottom. The water at the top, without the settled solids and grease, then goes to a series of pipes with holes that allow the water to soak into the ground. The system can work rather well if the tank is cleaned regularly, and if the ground will absorb the water.

In St. Matthews, the high, dry land was very flat, and the bedrock was very close to the surface. The ground soon became saturated. In wet weather, groundwater would rise above the level of the septic tank systems, and raw sewage would stand in the yards and drainage ditches. Wags called the area the "land of lakes," and the "lakes" were a health hazard — definitely unsuitable for recreation.

There had been talk of a sewer system for St. Matthews since the 1930s. Property owners in the business district had even formed their own company, built their own sewers, and then turned the system over to Louisville. But the residential areas went without sewer service.

Less than five years after the growth spurt began, the situation became intolerable. Residents, who still hadn’t incorporated their own city, organized their own sanitation district to build a sewer system. The only place to take the wastewater was Beargrass Creek, which flowed through Seneca and Cherokee parks.

The controversy was intense. Over the previous 30 years, Louisville had built an extended system of interceptor sewer lines to keep sewage out of the creek. The St. Matthews district’s proposal to build a sewage treatment plant along the creek didn’t reduce the opposition.

The debate raged for several years. Then, in the summer of 1948, the Metropolitan Sewer District agreed to take the sewage from the proposed St. Matthews system into an expanded Beargrass Creek interceptor, for an annual fee.

Construction started in the fall of 1948, and St. Matthews soon had sewers. In 1950, the City of St. Matthews was incorporated, to provide other urban services to an area that had become a large and thriving suburb. In 1975, the entire St. Matthews sewer system became part of MSD.