Council Member Oliver Koppell recently co-sponsored City Council legislation that enables the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to sell liens on the residential and commercial property of unscrupulous owners who have exploited the system by refusing to pay their water bills. The bill also protects those customers who do follow the rules, Koppell said, and prevented a massive water rate increase.
“The legislation empowers DEP to vigorously go after ‘deadbeat’ customers, as I have long suggested, while also offering a helping hand to single family homeowners, seniors and low-income individuals,” Koppell said in a statement.
The proposed customer protections will include exempting single family residences, low-income seniors and people with disabilities, offering a one-time payment incentive plan for all residential account holders and prohibiting DEP from collecting on adjusted estimated bills older than two years if the customer has kept current on their bill payments. It will also complete the installation of citywide automated meter reading systems by December of 2010.
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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.