Lakeview Water Corporation Overcharging Customers

Hot news on the street in Ogden Valley.  The word is that Lakeview Water Corporation serving the Ski Lake area has been overcharging their customers for water connection fees for years. 

The information we have been able to gather is that the previous owner of Lakeview Water overcharged most, if not all of the customers of Lakeview Water $500 each above the approved tariff (rate) for water connection fees than was approved by the Public Service Commission (PSC).

The overcharges may go back to the early years of the Lakeside Village development. 

The information we have obtained is that the PSC approved water connection fee for each customer was $1,000 until January 2008, when the fee was increased in a rate case to $3,500 for each customer.  Some customers told us their bills for the connection fees reflected $1,500 up to the rate increase in 2008 and others said it was $4,000 after January 2008.  Each customer noted the $500 overcharge on his or her connection fee.

The actual amount of customers affected is not known at this time, but Lakeview Water Corporation serves over 200 customers.  That indicates that the overcharges could amount to more than $100,000 dollars. 

Some Lakeview Water customers we spoke to say they noted their own overcharges recently and requested a refund from the new owner of Lakeview Water. They said they were either ignored or told that the statute of limitations had expired and Lakeview Water did not have to refund the money. The new owner is squealing like a mashed cat about the refund requests from his customers.  

What is known is the new owner of Lakeview Water and Mountain Sewer purchased the two corporations, at a bargain basement price and that that purchase included 66 lots in the Ski Lake area. Those 66 lots alone are worth about $8,250,000 at $125,000 per lot. This is also the same guy that is asking for a $1,300 special assessment from each customer in order to recoup the money to pay for employees salaries at Mountain Sewer that the previous owner did not pay before the sale. This special assessment is in addition to the 159% increase in the sewer fees

To summarize, the new owner of Mountain Sewer and Lakeview Water does not want to return the money from overcharged customers from the previous owner, but he wants those same customers to pay for the unpaid bills that were left behind by the same previous owner. Does that sound greedy or what?

Alabama county cuts deal of debt

We spotted an article in the September 30, 2011 issue of “The Week,” a national magazine, which reminds us of Ogden Valley's own Mountain Valley sewer fiasco.

Jefferson County, Ala., has avoided “what could have been the 
biggest municipal bankruptcy filing in American history,” said Mary Williams Walsh in The New York Times.  Officials in the county, which includes Birmingham, have reached a deal to restructure $ 3 billion in debt, which grew out of a sewer system revamp plagued by flawed accounting and corruption. Under the proposal, the county’s Wall Street creditors would forgive about $ 1 billion of the debt, but residents would face higher bills for sewer service.

Does this sound familiar?

Lakeview Water and Mountain Sewer owner bugs out under investigation pressure.

It was learned recently from Melvin Smith, Ron Catanzaro’s attorney

in the Ogden area, that Catanzaro has left the State of Utah for Nevada.

As reported in this blog, Mountain Sewer Company has been the subject of a Formal Complaint and investigation by the Utah Public Service Commission (PSC) regarding operating problems and billing questions regarding both Mountain Sewer and Lakeview Water Corporations.

Our information is that Catanzaro turned over most or all of his assets to the owner of A-1 pumping pending approval of the Public Service Commission. These assets include both Mountain Sewer and Lakeview Water Corporations. Word on the street is that Mountain Sewer owed A-1 pumping and other vendors substantial unpaid bills for services.

At the pre hearing conference on July 19th the Public Service Commission law judge indicated that a complete audit of Mountain Sewer as requested by the complainants would be one of the first orders of business, and the parties would reconvene in about a month to to discuss the audit results and set the date for the Formal Hearing. It appears that Mr. Catanzaro did not want to face the PSC audit results and examination of his operating procedures detailed in the formal complaint, so he decided to sell out and leave the area.

An initial meeting between the prospective new owner of Mountain Sewer and Lakeview Water corporations and the Ad hoc committee of utility users that filed the formal complaint against Mountain Sewer was held on July 28th. The purpose was to air out some particulars about the sale and transfer of assets and responsibilities and to have some utility customers meet the new owner so they could get to know each other. The new owner committed to working with the users to resolve current outstanding issues and he promised to stay in communication with the utility users on the operations and plans for the future for both corporations. A check with the PSC staff indicated the normal timeframe for approval of an uncontested sale of a PSC regulated company is from 45 to 60 days.

It is not clear as of this writing how this transfer of assets will affect the pending PSC formal complaint or what the reaction of the possible sale is from the Weber County Commissioners who have been the body politic for oversight for Mountain Sewer for many years.

Update on Lakeview Water and Mountain Sewer

A correction to the initial post: The new owner of Mountain Sewer and Lakeview Water is the father of the owner of A-1 Pumping.

Pre Hearing Conference - Mountain Sewer Formal Complaint

On Tuesday, July 19, 2011, the Public Service Commission Administrative Law Judge, David Clark, conducted a pre hearing conference to lay out the  procedures regarding the Formal PSC Complaint filed by a group of Ogden Valley residents served by Mountain Sewer Corporation.

Judge Clark stated that since there would soon be a request from Mountain Sewer for a rate increase, and a possible sale of Mr. Catanzaro’s water and sewer properties, the complainants request for a complete, independent audit of the utility's accounting books and operating systems by the PSC staff will be one of the first items to be addressed.

When the audit of Mountain Sewer is completed, all parties will again meet to discuss the results of the audit and determine the next step in the complaint process.

The Weber County Commission, who is the designated body politic for Mountain Sewer, chose not to send a representative to the conference today, but sent a letter to the Administrative Law Judge stating their position regarding their responsibilities for oversight of Mountain Sewer.

The Ogden Valley Forum feels the non-participation by Weber County is a disservice to Mountain Sewer customers, especially those in the Lakeside Village Town homes, and is a continuation of Weber County’s inconsistent oversight record regarding Mountain Sewer operational problems. Many of the Lakeside Village town home owners have suffered multiple sewage flooding incidents (the latest March 16, 2011) due to the functional problems of Mountain Sewer’s lift pumps. These town home owners have found a mixture of storm water with raw sewage in their homes during numerous flooding incidents dating back several years.

The Forum urges the Weber County Commissioners to step up and fulfill their responsibilities regarding Mountain Sewer instead of pushing the problems off for future meetings of the Special Service District  board.

Sewer complaint filed by owners of Huntsville condos

The Mountain Sewer Corp. fiasco has made it to the pages of the Standard Examiner. Our faithful readers will remember this ongoing saga which has involved questionable billing practices, dumping raw sewage from a faulty system into the man hole of another sewer system and even raw sewage flooding the Lakeside Condos.

Read Monday's Standard article by clicking the link below:

Sewer complaint filed by owners of Huntsville condos

For more history of the Mountain Sewer Corp., click here.


From Monday's Scott Schwebke article:

Several Huntsville-area residents have filed a complaint with the Utah Public Service Commission contending Mountain Sewer Corp. failed to prevent raw sewage from entering 15 condominiums in Lakeside Village during a flood.

The article goes on to state:

The complainants are asking the Public Service Commission to inspect Mountain Sewer to prevent a recurrence of problems that happened the night of March 16.
They have also requested that the Public Service Commission audit Mountain Sewer's financial records to determine if charges to customers and prospective customers have been proper and uniform.

The complaint isn't an attempt to crucify Mountain Sewer or its owner, Ronald Catanzaro, Zini said. "All we really want is a sewer company that functions properly and bills properly," he said.

Mountain Sewer does an outstanding job serving Huntsville-area residents, said Catanzaro, who denied the allegations contained in the complaint. "I think we have been successful," he said.

Ross Hudson, a complaint specialist with the state Division of Public Utilities, said he will recommend that the Public Service Commission hold a hearing on the complaint. He declined to provide the Standard-Examiner with information regarding the grievance. However, Zini gave the newspaper a copy of the complaint and noted that Mountain Sewer serves about 125 customers in Lakeside Village, The Summit at Ski Lake and Edgewater Chalets.

Mountain Sewer and Lakeview Water Corp. in Huntsville, also owned by Catanzaro, are scheduled to be sold at a tax auction on May 26, according to the Weber County Treasurer's Office. Catanzaro owes a total of $1,722 for Mountain Sewer and $3,222 for Lakeview Water for unpaid property taxes from 2006 to 2010, records indicate.
Catanzaro said he will pay the bill this week.

What do our Ogden Valley Faithful have to say about this stinky mess?

Problems at Mountain Sewer Corporation?

Mountain Sewer Corporation is the subject of a formal complaint filed last week with the Utah Public Service Commission (PSC). The formal complaint was filed by a collective group of Mountain Sewer customers on the south end of Pineview Reservoir.

An informal complaint was filed on February 16, 2011 against Mountain Sewer. On March 16, 2011 a disastrous flood affected several town homes at the Lakeside Village complex. Raw sewage water mixed with the storm runoff flow and flooded several town homes causing considerable damage. This was due in part to a blocked storm drain that diverted storm runoff to a sanitary sewer opening maintained by Mountain Sewer. Another factor in the flooding appears to have been two sewage lift pumps owned by Mountain Sewer at the Lakeside Village town homes that have not functioned properly for several years.

The functional problems with these lift pumps had previously resulted in Mountain Sewer Corp. pumping raw sewage from the Lakeside Village sewer vaults into trucks, transporting the sewage into a gated community and dumping the raw sewage into manholes in that private community. This was the solution that Mountain Sewer chose rather than repairing the long standing problems with the lift pumps at Lakeside Village.

During the investigation following the flooding on March 16th, it was discovered that Mountain Sewer had ignored several administrative PSC regulations regarding the proximity of developed lots to the sewer company's sewer lagoons, and the road maintenance requirements for those lagoons.

The Mountain Sewer user’s complaint states that Mountain Sewer has been inconsistent and at times, remiss with it’s billing and collections of State regulated sewer fees.

Discussions with several Mountain Sewer users revealed that while some Mountain Sewer customers have received bills and paid hookup fees, pre-connection fees, and normal sewer fees over the years, others being served by Mountain Sewer have not. In the operation of State regulated utilities such as Mountain Sewer, inconsistent billing of regulated fees or collections of those fees is not an option. The regulated utility is required to accurately bill and record payments for every customer in their serving area.

Since the owner of Mountain Sewer is the same developer that also developed the surrounding area of Ski Lake, there is some understandable concern among Mountain Sewer customers of the possible commingling of funds with his other corporations, and the possible failure of the developer to pay for his own sewer fees and connection fees for lots that he owned during the past several years.

Important Weber County Commission Meeting Tuesday - Heliport and Ski Lake Special District

Heliport and Ski Lake Special Service District on the agenda.


Another important meeting is scheduled for Tuesday:


Commission Chambers of the Weber Center
2380 Washington Boulevard, Ogden, Utah
at 10:00 a.m. 
Tuesday, the 5th day of April 2011.

Click here to view the agenda 


We will highlight two important items:

2.           Request for approval of a resolution of the Board of Commissioners of Weber County establishing an Administrative Control Board for the Ski Lake Special Service District.

              Presenter: Commissioner Zogmaister

4.           Consideration and/or action on an appeal of the Ogden Valley Planning Commission decision denying a conditional use permit (CUP 2010-04) for a private heliport located at the Red Moose Lodge in Eden, located at 2547 North Valley Junction Drive.

              Presenter: Ben Hatfield

Our humble readers will remember some issues related to the Ski Lake Sewer.  For more details, search the Ogden Valley Forum for "ski lake" and "Ron Catanzero" using the search box on the right sidebar.  [Blogmeister's note: we would typically provide a simple to use link to the search item, but we are posting from a country that has banned access to the Forum.  Thus, you will have to do some of your own simple research.]

As for the heliport issue, we suggest you do the same to get up to speed on the issue - search "heliport" using the search box on the right side bar.

Regular readers will recall this issue has been ongoing for the last two ski seasons.  After a falling out with Powder Mountain, where Diamond Peaks Heli-sking had operated for years, the ski helicopter operator was flying out of the Red Moose Lodge during the 2009-10 ski season without the county required permits and approvals.  The county ordinance official gave the operators a cease and desist order but County Commissioner Jan Zogmaister exercised a rarely used emergency action to allow Diamond Peaks to continue through the 2010 ski season.

The petitioners recently went before the Ogden Valley Planning Commission to request a conditional use permit (CUP 2010-04) for a private heliport located at the Red Moose Lodge in Eden.  The request was ultimately denied and the petitioners have appealed to the County Commissioners.


It should be noted that Diamond Peaks has been operating out of Snowbasin this year, so the denial has not prevented Diamond Peaks from flying - it has only stopped them from flying out of the Red Moose Lodge Property.  In fact, from the Facebook Page "Keep Diamond Peaks Heli-Ski Adventures in the Ogden Valley," this was posted on March 16, 2011:

Diamond Peaks Heli-Ski Adventures is proud to say that we are now operating out of Snowbasin. They have treated us very well and we look forward to excellent mutual business together for the remainder of the season and seasons to come.

We at the forum applaud this new development and feel this is a win win situation for all - Diamond Peaks, Snowbasin, their guests and Ogden Valley residents.

We have heard rumors that the out of state owner of the Red Moose Lodge has the property for sale on the real estate market.  The last thing Ogden Valley needs is another precedence being set.  In this case, a heliport that would transfer and be grandfathered to the new owner, even though the original user (Diamond Peaks) has moved on and has properly found a new suitor.  Congratulations to Diamond Peaks.


Your attendance at the Tuesday meeting is crucial, but it is even more important that you contact the commissioners now to provide them input on these important issues.  If you wait to contact them on Tuesday, it will be too late.


We have included the email addresses for the County Commissioners.  Now it's time to send them a clear message.
Craig Dearden cdearden@co.weber.ut.us
Jan Zogmaister jzogmaister@co.weber.ut.us
Kerry Gibson kgibson@co.weber.ut.us

The Rest of The Story on Last Night's Flooding - Raw Sewage Floods Lakeside Condos

This is one of several important posts today - be sure to scroll down to review all

If anyone in Ogden Valley has wondered why there is a strange odor around the Ski Lake area the word on the street is that it is coming from raw sewage dumps and overflows from the Mountain Sewer Corp. owned by Mr. Ron Catanzaro.

The facts appear to be that some of the sewage pumping equipment has not been working properly at the Lakeside Village Town homes for several years and Mountain Sewer has decided rather than to fix the pumps, they would instead pump the excess sewage from the town homes into tanker trucks, then move it to a private community in the same area and dump it in to their sewer manholes. When some of the neighbors in the private community witnessed this they questioned Mr. Catanzaro’s reasoning since the sewage could be dumped directly into his company’s sewer ponds along Old Snow Basin Road and not into sewers within the private community.

While Mountain Sewer does not seem to see anything wrong with trespassing on private property and dumping raw sewage in a private community, think how any of us would react if a company dumped raw sewage from other locations into the sewers on your street.

All of this resulted in a Ski Lake Special Service District meeting on Tuesday, January 25th with the County Commissioners to allow for public input about Mountain Sewer Corp. problems and other related items on the District’s agenda for the day.

Following the January, 2011 meeting of the Ski Lake Special Service District many of the Mountain Sewer users wrote a letter to the Weber County Commissioners to again outline these problems and ask the Commissioners to resolve these problems by bringing Mountain Sewer into operational compliance. It was revealed that Mountain Sewer never has had a operator’s permit as required by the State. There has been no reply from the County Commissioners on this letter.

The Weber County Commission as the body politic has oversight responsibility for the Ski Lake Special Service District and Mountain Sewer. They are responsible for oversight of Mountain Sewer Corp.’s operation. It appears that Weber County has been seriously remiss in their oversight responsibility.

Last night, March 16th, the sewage pumps at the Lakeside Village complex were not able to handle the sewage flow once again and numerous Town homes were flooded with sewage waste. It is a deplorable situation that requires immediate action from our County Commissioners.

For years, some operators of sewage systems have gamed the system by intentionally interconnecting storm and sanitary sewer systems, resulting in sanitary sewage being diverted to storm sewers and, untreated, into public waters. The less sewage you treat, the cheaper it is. We don’t know for sure that such a condition exists with Mountain Sewer, but we do know that massive amounts of storm water wound up in the Mountain Sewer sanitary system. Could it have been through an intentional interconnection?

The other possibilities, of course, are bad design or malfunction, or a combination of the two. In any case, storm water and sewage are not supposed to intermix, and they sure did, here, and fifteen condo owners and renters are up to their ankles in raw sewage as a result.

In addition to the dumping of raw sewage and an ineffective pumping system, Mountain Sewer appears to have bookkeeping problems. It is well know among the residents served by Mountain Sewer that Mr. Catanzaro has failed to collect from several property owners sewer connection fees regulated by the State. It is rumored that he himself has failed to pay these same fees on properties that he owned. What is ironic about all this is that Mr. Catanzaro pleads that he has no money to make the necessary repairs to his pumping equipment and needs a rate increase to cover his operation costs while he is not collecting the basic fees and payments from everyone on his system.

In addition, it has come to light that Mr. Catanzaro offered cut rate hookup fees for water and sewer to prospective lot buyers in order to boost his lot sales. The problem with this offer is that it is not legal to reduce the price of water and sewer hookups for anyone when these fees are regulated by the State of Utah. Anyone that has received this “deal” from Mr. Catanzaro should verify that he made up the difference on the “cut rates” and deposited the full amount in the Mountain Sewer accounts. If this has not been done, those lot owners may have to pay the difference to Mountain Sewer at a later date. The State Of Utah has contacted Mr. Catanzaro on this issue.

While the media was on site last night, they seemingly missed the real story of Raw Sewage and the faulty pumps.

Storm causing flooding in Weber, Morgan counties - ksl.com

And from this morning's Standard Examiner:

Rain Causes Flooding in Weber, Morgan

Weber County Commission Meeting Tuesday - Summit @ Ski Lake up for Approval

Zogmaister campaign donor/ tax evader Ron Catanzero doesn't waste any time in requesting approval of another phase at Ski Lake

We noticed some interesting items on the Pre Christmas Weber county commission meeting agenda.  The important meeting will be:

Commission Chambers of the Weber Center,
2380 Washington Boulevard, Ogden, Utah,
commencing at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, the 21st day of December 2010.

Here is an excerpt from the agenda:

 E. Action Items

2. Request for approval of Phase 11 Summit at Ski Lake.
Presenter: Ron Cantanzaro
3. Request for consideration and/or action on an agreement between Ski Lake Corporation, Mountain Sewer Corporation, and Weber County regarding a time extension for the Chalets at Ski Lake and The Summit at Ski Lake.
Presenter: Sean Wilkinson

Of particular interest is the fact that Mr. Catanzero has a long history of leaving the citizen's of Weber County holding the bag for his financial difficulties.  More interesting is the fact that the County continues to entertain Mr. Catanzero's requests.

Click here to view the delinquent history of one subject parcel - there are many more delinquent properties.  
Ultimately, these delinquent taxes were apparently paid by Celtic Bank following foreclosure of the subject property.

For more, click here to view the 2009 delinquent tax list.  They are listed alphabetically so scroll down to see the many listings for "Catanzero" and "Ski Lake corporation."

It would appear that Ron is anxious to get on the agenda before Commissioner Bischoff retires.  Many will remember the large "Bischoff for County commission" signs plastered on several of Catanzero's properties during Bischoff's last campaign.

Perhaps there are some unpaid favors in store for Mr. Catanzero?