AUBURN Faced with inevitable sewer rate increases, a standing-room-only crowd packed City Hall on Wednesday to discuss possible solutions to ongoing sewer system problems. In the end, City Council voted to accept an interlocal agreement with Russellville to create an authority overseeing both cities water and sewer systems. Russellville City Council is expected to vote Tuesday on the agreement an attempt to end Auburns longstanding waste water treatment plant woes. If Russellville accepts the plan, work on a pipeline to carry wastewater from Auburn to Russellvilles treatment plant would begin this summer, Auburn Mayor Dewey Roche said. Since 1994, Auburn has received from the state Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet 15 notices of violations at its sewer plant, City Attorney Currie Milliken said. This past summer, then-Mayor Oscar Wren and Milliken reached a settlement with the cabinet that allowed Auburn to avoid paying more than $1 million in fines and interest from the violations if the city brings the sewer system into compliance by April 1, 2002, Milliken said. We were in a terrible, untenable position, he said. We were guilty. I felt like we came out with an outstanding settlement, given the circumstances going in. A Quest Engineering feasibility study of the Auburn plant offered three alternatives:expanding and revamping the citys existing plant at a cost of $3.5 million.building a new plant at a cost of $4.5 million.building a pipeline to take wastewater to Russellville at a projected cost of just under $5 million. Of the three, the pipeline probably would be the best long-term solution to the citys problems, Roche said. An interlocal agreement with Russellville also would help open the doors to state and federal grants, said Roger Recktenwald, a consultant for Kentucky Infrastructure Authority who has been working with Auburn and Russellville to develop plans for the oversight authority. Regionalism is a hot topic at the state level right now, Recktenwald said. The governor is really pushing it for smaller communities like Auburn. Auburns poor track record in running a sewer system would work against it in grant competitions, if they chose another route to try to solve the problem, Roche said. Its going to take nothing short of a miracle to make the state accept a plan that involves us running a sewer plant, he said. That didnt appease residents concerned by estimates showing that sewer rates could climb by as much as $90 a month to help fund the pipeline. We just had a rate increase about a year ago, and what did we get for it? Bruce Baggett of Auburn asked. Councilman Bobby Price said he doesnt like the idea of a rate increase either. I dont want to pay more for water and sewer any more than you do, he said. But weve known these things have been here, and weve kept on ignoring them and hoping theyll go away, and thats not going to work. Russellville utilities Director Chuck McCollum said the $90-a-month estimate is too high. I assure you it wont cost that much, McCollum said. The pipeline would help Auburn and the rest of Logan County grow, something water woes have curtailed during the past decade, McCollum said. Look at Franklins growth compared to ours, he said. What does Simpson County have that we dont?They have adequate water and sewer systems, which we did not have for a long time.