A contract over sewage has been lingering between the City of Glens Falls and the Town of Queensbury for more than three years. But now, it's being settled. YNN's Brooke Selby has more on why the issue took so long to clean up.

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GLENS FALLS, N.Y. -- In 2002, Glens Falls had a municipal service that was in demand: Sewage maintenance. That is just what the Town of Queensbury needed help with. So the two entered into a 20 year agreement.

Glens Falls’ mayor said it was a matter of a municipality cooperative effort.

”They needed capacity, we needed cash," Mayor Jack Diamond said.

Only after the first three years, the agreement started to smell bad to both sides. Queensbury stopped paying Glens Falls over concerns that they were paying too much per gallon, so the dispute went to court.

Queensbury Town Supervisor Dan Stec said, “Each year, when you get around to budget time, that's when people will start looking and say hey, can I continue to not worry about finally wrapping this up and I think this year we got to the point where the city said we really need to wrap this up and the town too."

Earlier this month, Glens Falls Mayor Jack Diamond expressed his concern the lingering dispute would impact SUNY Adirondack's ability to service their new dorm facility.

According to Stec, he was “never overly concerned that it was an issue, but I think that SUNY Adirondack brought attention to the problem and made us focus on it."

Friday, the pair announced the billing process would be simplified to two dollars per one thousand gallons.

Diamond said, "We initially instituted the litigation and the judge asked us to try to resolve these issues internally. We finally came to some common ground on how to resolve these issues and it truly makes sense that we try to charge them per gallons."

Queensbury will pay Glens Falls the backdated money, plus an additional $50,000 per year for advance utilities in case they exceed capacity, totaling more than $750,000 over a four year term.

Stec said, "There will be certainty moving forward as we are able to settle these outstanding quarters, but more importantly, going forward, we should have a lot less questions on the bills and what's owed, it should be very simple process."

Queensbury and Glens Falls hope to get the amendment ratified by their common councils early next week.