Like it or not, Lancaster County residents will be digging deeper into their pocketbooks to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, a body of water that doesn't even touch Pennsylvania.

Some local municipalities are looking at rate hikes up to 40 percent to cover sewage-treatment upgrades over the next few years.

As the state struggles to meet a promise it made seven years ago to vastly reduce the amount of nutrients flowing down the Susquehanna River by 2010, environmental officials have targeted sewage plants as one place to tighten the screws.

All 17 regional sewage plants in Lancaster County this year are working to meet much-stricter caps on the amount of oxygen-robbing nitrogen and phosphorus they can discharge into waterways.

The deadline for compliance is 2010 or 2012, depending on the facility, and officials know their sewage-treatment facilities need expensive upgrades soon to meet the mandates.

A few examples:

• In Ephrata Borough, upgrades to one of two regional plants will total $10 million to $15 million. Borough officials say sewage customers should expect a hike in their bills of between 25 percent and 40 percent when the project is bid in late 2009.

• In Lititz Borough and Warwick Township, sewage customers in September began paying $80 more a year to fund $13 million in planned sewage-treatment improvements.

• In Manheim Borough, officials are drawing up a $10 million to $12 million bond issue to pay for upgrades. Customers will see a 20 percent increase this year. And unless officials can get a grant or earn "nutrient credits" by digging up old nutrient-laden sediment in a local stream, customers can expect another 20 percent hike in 2009 and yet a third 20 percent increase in 2011.

• In Columbia Borough, officials are trying to spare residents startling sewer hikes if a $10 million to $20 million plant is built. They're considering a co-generation electrical plant powered by river water to soften the blow.

And that's not all.

As a result of lawsuits by environmental groups, the federal Environmental Protection Agency is forcing Pennsylvania and four nearby states to clean up polluted streams and rivers under a clause of the U.S. Clean Water Act that had never been enforced until now.

With 43 percent of waterways in Lancaster County found to be impaired, a new round of nutrient limits on watersheds will likely force even tougher standards on many sewage plants.

"Some may be getting hit with a double whammy," acknowledges Sandra Roderick, spokeswoman for the southcentral regional office of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

It's not just steeper sewage bills that worry public officials. Municipal officials warn that the new caps may reduce sewage plants' ability to accommodate future growth.

Planners worry that future sewage-treatment shortfalls will prompt developers to move farther out in the countryside, short-circuiting efforts to control sprawl.

Developments might return to on-lot sewage systems, which environmental officials discourage because they can leak over time and pollute groundwater.

"Our concern from the start was the whole concept of the load caps. Absent a viable trading program (where sewer authorities would pay farmers for conservation measures), it really will limit growth in the region and affect economic growth as well," warns Mike Kyle, executive director of the Lancaster Area Sewer Authority, the county's second largest.

"Lots of planners in the county are concerned about the potential impact on sprawl. We want to see concentrated growth."

"It's a huge issue," agrees Mary Frey, a principal planner with the Lancaster County Planning Commission.

"It's hard to get a handle on it. No one really knows where it's headed. There are systems that say we have capacity for development for now. But if they have to go for treatment instead of development, that's going to be an issue."

That's exactly what Lancaster City officials are fretting about.

They have just completed a $2 million system to reduce nutrients and in March approved bonds for $13 million in improvements to the city sewer system to add future capacity.

Now, city officials are worried they will have to devote some of that capacity to meet the tougher nutrient caps.

"The state has really put a kink in everything," says Charlotte Katzenmoyer, the city's superintendent of public works. "It's going to be hard to explain to ratepayers in 10 years that we have to build more capacity. It will mean we have to do something else sooner and raise rates sooner."

Many local officials are disgruntled about the crackdown on sewage plants.

They feel they are being singled out when farm runoff and other "nonpoint" sources are responsible for 86 percent of the nitrogen flowing into the Chesapeake Bay and 78 percent of the phosphorus.

"I think it's a general consensus by publicly owned treatment works that since they are contributing less than 20 percent of the total that the focus on them and not nonpoint discharges is unfair," says Bob Thompson, Ephrata Borough's director of engineering and public works.

But, as DEP's Roderick notes, sewage plants "are a more immediate fix. It is an identifiable source, improvements can be exact and the reduction of pollutants is measurable.

"Agriculture is a more difficult area since it is often multiple fertilizers, manure and animals in the streams that are the source of nutrients."