Oct 9, 2025 By Garrett Neese 2 min read

The Lower Ten Mile Joint Sewer Authority is hopeful a solution is finally at hand for the postal processing woes that led to its monthly bills getting sidetracked before they could be sent to customers.

The August bills had not gone out to customers, repeating a problem that had occurred in February, said Sharon Confortini, the sewer authority’s office secretary.

Each month, Lower Ten Mile prints out the 1,369 bills on green-and-white postcards, separated in rubber-banded bundles by municipality, and takes them to the post office in Jefferson.

The tray eventually goes to a processing center in Pittsburgh, where it has twice gotten misplaced. The first time happened with the bills sent out Feb. 25, Confortini said.

“We waited a week to contact them, because I kept saying, ‘Well, maybe they’ll find them. Maybe they’ll find them,'” she said.

The February bills were eventually found in Pittsburgh, “sitting on a shelf somewhere they weren’t supposed to be,” Confortini said.

Those bills eventually got delivered to the customers a day after the payment due date, right before the March bills were set to be printed out, Confortini said.

The issue happened again with the August bills, which are still missing, Confortini said.

“At this point, I actually told the girl (from the U.S. Postal Service) I don’t want to find them, because our people are so confused now with double bills,” she said.

Because customers did not get their bills on time, the company did not charge any late fees for those months, Confortini said. It also skipped the usual policies for more advanced fees: no certified letters for those two months behind, and no sending the constables after people who were three months late.

“We just didn’t feel it was fair that they didn’t get the bill to see what they were owed,” Confortini said.

After discussions with the Postal Service, the tray that takes the monthly bills to Pittsburgh now has a green label on it with a barcode. The new system went into effect for the September bills, which were mailed out without incident.

“I’m hoping from now on, it won’t be an issue because they’ll be able to track that,” Confortini said.

Information from USPS about its system for tracking mail and statistics for mail delivery had not been received by press time Wednesday.