Penn Hills residents who receive their water bills from Oakmont Water Authority will notice in April that they owe substantially larger amounts than usual.

That's because Oakmont Water Authority is taking over collection of sewer usage fees from Central Tax Bureau and will combine water and sewer usage fees for its quarterly bills, beginning next month.

Residents who receive their water bills from Wilkinsburg-Penn Joint Water Authority (WPJWA) could receive combined quarterly bills for water and sewer usage fees as early as July.

WPJWA needs more time than Oakmont Water Authority for the change because numerous address errors were found, said Terry Van Horne, municipal manager.

Anthony Russo Jr., executive director of WPJWA, would not comment on the errors that need to be corrected, but said July is the target date to take over Penn Hills sewer billing from Central Tax.

Mayor Anthony DeLuca Jr. has been looking into combined water and sewer bills for several years because he thinks residents would be more likely to pay their sewer fees if they were combined with their water bills.

The main stumbling block for combining water and sewer usage fees into one bill had been a consent order from the 1980s. Issues with that consent order were cleared up about eight weeks ago, Van Horne said.

Elected officials have expressed disappointment about how Central Tax has collected sewer fees over the years.

In January, Councilwoman Sara Kuhn criticized Central Tax for being five weeks behind in mailing fourth-quarter 2007 sewer bills that were scheduled to be sent out by Dec. 15.

Penn Hills wants to find a way to recover more than $500,000 in delinquent sewer fees.

Van Horne is proposing to bring in a Philadelphia law firm to collect those delinquent sewer fees. The firm is experienced in collecting delinquent fees and taxes for school districts and municipalities, he said.

Kuhn said something needs to be done to decrease the amount of delinquent sewer fees. Having the water and sewer bills combined will help, she said.

Kuhn said she wishes WPJWA would start collection of sewer bills earlier, because that would help decrease sewer delinquencies sooner.

She said she is confident WPJWA will reverse the delinquency trend because its collection rate is above 90 percent.