Fayette County extends water bill amnesty

Customers of the Fayette County Water System are getting an additional 30 days of amnesty for paying their overdue bills before their water is cut off.

The Board of Commissioners approved the extension 5-0 at its June 11 meeting, to align with the expiration of the state’s Public Health Emergency period on July 12. The board voted in March, when the first COVID-19 shutdowns began, to suspend utility cutoffs for 90 days to ensure that residential customers would still have water for sanitation purposes.

Water system director Vanessa Tigert said the department has been calling customers whose water would have been shut off by now to try to work out payment terms. County Manager Steve Rapson told the board that approximately 300 of the system’s 34,000 customers get cut off for nonpayment in a typical billing cycle, but that number could double based on current economic conditions.