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OTTUMWA, IOWA -- The Wapello County Supervisors are in what they describe as a "stand off" with the RUSS Board.

RUSS stands for Regional Utility Service Systems and was designed to give small communities help with their sewer systems. Wapello County wants out, and RUSS says no.

County Supervisor Greg Kenning said since joining the organization 14 years ago, the county had invested around $16,000 of taxpayer money and had nothing to show for it. There were no projects designated for Wapello County, and none in the near future, so the county stopped paying dues in 2010.

"The one thing I would note that's the most remarkable in this whole event is that we've been members of this organization since 1999 and there's never been a project proposed for Wapello County," Kenning said. "There have been other organizations, other counties, that have joined since then that now may have multiple projects, so it seems to be rather an exclusionary organization designed to benefit the few at the cost of the many."

At December's meeting, Wapello County was told that the only way out of the agreement is to get the unanimous approval of every board involved in RUSS, which Kenning said seems nearly impossible.

Davis County was able to get out of the RUSS agreement in 2010, but the December meeting also decided the departure wasn't handled properly and Davis County now owes the board money.

Now, Wapello County doesn't know what the next steps will be, but one thing is certain; they don't want to pick up the slack from other counties and be involved in something that doesn't profit residents of the county.

"Our taxpayers are, in effect, penalized for actions of - you might call them sluffers - in other counties," Kenning said. "That concerns me. There needs to be some kind of action that we can take so that we're not responsible or we're taken off the hook for someone's deadbeat behavior."