In the next six to 12 months, the city of Bend could have a new plan in place for assessing how much business and industrial utility customers pay for their sewer bills.

By the time that happens, though, it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Starting this month and lasting through March, city outreach workers will be dropping by businesses to let them know about the city’s plans to update its wastewater program. The goal of the changes, which are still in the works, is to recover costs of treating high-strength wastewater and put a rate structure in place so that the businesses discharging the waste pay for the level of treatment required, and the costs aren’t passed on to others.

“I need businesses to understand this is coming, and I want to give them every chance to talk with us,” said Bend Business Advocate Carolyn Eagan. Business representatives will also get information in utility bills and information about city meetings where they can give their input, she said.

The city’s Extra Strength Charge Advisory Committee met Monday to discuss next steps. The committee’s work, which does not involve residential users, is preliminary. The panel’s members include members of the business community. The Bend City Council will make the final decisions.

The city’s planning is part of an effort to update a fee system created in the 1980s.

An individual business getting a visit from an outreach worker won’t get an estimate on how much the sewer bills may change — those details are yet to be determined.

However, it will get information about the concept of the extra-strength program and being a good steward of a sewer system, Eagan said.

“The goal of any extra-strength program is to charge users of the sewer system the costs of what they flush down the toilet or put down the drain,” she said.

As a result, it’s an issue that will have more impact on certain types of businesses, like hair salons, breweries, bakeries and car washes — and less on others.

Part of that entails looking at more than just the volume of discharge from a business. It also means looking at how heavily polluted the wastewater put into the city sewage is, which can vary based on the industry and its practices.

For example, a bakery may put sugar and dough into the sewer system. But an office is unlikely to be discharging anything beyond what a residential customer would.

Frank Turek, a committee member, said that extra-strength discharge wastewater takes longer to treat at the plant. That, in turn, impacts the volume of wastewater that the plant can treat each day, he said.

“You need to account for what happens at the treatment plant,” he said.

Other details to work out include an appeals process so businesses who disagree with the category in which they are placed could seek a reclassification.