District officials are recommending that the Sacramento Area Sewer District board spend millions of dollars installing new hardware and cleaning lines to prevent costly sewage overflows.

The recommendation – which will be presented formally at the board's meeting Wednesday – comes in response to a sharp increase in the amount the district is paying for cleaning up sewage backups in homes and amid lingering questions about suspicious contracting.

In recent years, the number of claims against the district – most often a result of raw sewage spilling into a home – has tripled. In 2007, the district paid $3.1 million in settlements.

Board members said there is reason for concern.

"Ratepayers need to know that their money is being spent appropriately," said Susan Peters, a Sacramento County supervisor and sewer board member.

Earlier this year, a handful of Sacramento-area plumbers sought to blow the whistle on what they believed were cases of inappropriate billing by district employees.

Christoph Dobson, the district's collections system chief, said those accusations were unfounded.

Nonetheless, the district has to address physical issues with the system, concerns about its process for dealing with backups and questions about overbilling, he said.

Last month, district officials said an auditor had been hired to shadow staff and contractors at the beginning of a cleanup.

The goal of that effort is to ensure costs aren't being inflated in the cleanup process.

"If there are some cost savings in there, I'm pretty confident we'll find them," Dobson said.

In late 2007, a consultant recommended the district give less power to a third-party adjuster for assessing and dealing with problems.

A third audit will look at the cost of restoring homes after an overflow, Dobson said.

The stepped-up effort to address infrastructure issues is already under way and within the current year's budget, Dobson said. But he said he couldn't rule out future rate increases.

Since spring, the district targeted 1,200 hot spots for contractors to install curbside clear-outs, inspect the home's connection to the main line, and either clean, repair or replace the connection.

Dobson said he'll recommend the district continue with that plan, and over the next 10 years as claims costs go down, use those extra funds to increase proactive maintenance. Under that plan, the district would spend about $10 million annually on claims, installing new clear-outs, and cleaning or repairing connections.

The plan would be to target areas with older pipes and thicker tree coverage first.

Responsibility for maintaining pipes that connect individual homes to the public sewer main is shared by the county and the property owner.

If a blockage occurs on the district's portion of the connection, it clears the blockage and deals with the damage.

Another key change Dobson will recommend is replacing the caps topping curbside clear-outs with valves that can release overflows.

The idea is to allow the sewage backup to spill into homeowners' yards, rather than into homes.

The ratepayer-funded agency is governed by a 10-member board made up of the five county supervisors and one representative each from the cities of Sacramento, Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova, Citrus Heights and Folsom.

Supervisor Roger Dickinson, who is also a board member, said it's important to find the balance between being "appropriately sympathetic" to customers while not responding to problems that aren't the district's.

Dickinson asked: "Are enough questions being asked? Are the adjusters being too accommodating? Are we properly monitoring our contracts?"

Call The Bee's Ed Fletcher, (916) 321-1269.