INSIDE

Storage tank considered

By Meg Olson

The audience spilled out of the water district offices during the July 13 meeting of district commissioners, but many left with more questions than they came with.

“Nobody could tell what was going on and that defeats the purpose of a public meeting,” said audience member Steven Sweetwood at the close of the meeting.

“You have to understand the frustration some of the audience is feeling.”

At the beginning of the meeting commission chair Madeleine Anderson said the commission would accept comments but not answer questions, due to a full meeting agenda. “We’re not going to have a dialogue. We’ll never get through this,” said commissioner Renée Coe. “This meeting is for us to get business done.” Asked if there could be another forum for the public to get questions answered about the ongoing moratorium on new water connections, Coe said individual questions submitted in writing would be answered individually.

There was no misunderstanding the commissioner’s unanimous decision to extend the moratorium, due to expire at the end of July 2006, until January 2007. “No surprises there,” said Kirby Kinney, a local property owner waiting for a water connection to build a new home.

“I don’t really want to do this but I have to,” said commissioner Sue Johnson as she voted for another six months of moratorium. Coe explained that the district was still waiting for legal staff to draft a resolution establishing new connection fees and an allocation process to hand out the remaining 140 water connections currently authorized by the state. Once the allocation process is established, she said, commissioners plan to lift the moratorium. “We can rescind it as soon as we come up with whatever we will be working with for the allotment,” she said. There was no timeline given for the allotment process to be in place.

Commissioners had a more opaque discussion regarding increasing the district’s capacity, based on a report from water district engineers. There was no report given to the public prior to commissioners discussing the information, and no copies of the document being considered were available to the public during the meeting.

“This is good news for the community because it may come in less time than if we had gone down the well road,” Coe said. In their report engineers are recommending, “Construction of seasonal peaking storage would be the preferable alternative for increasing capacity to serve future connections.” Their analysis found that to serve the 3,270 connections needed if the Point was at maximum build-out allowed under current zoning without a public sewer, the district needed three million gallons of peaking storage.

“I will stress this hasn’t been approved by the state but we’re very confident,” said district manager Dan Bourks. “This will allow us to proceed and serve more rapidly.”

A construction plan and funding for the project were on the agenda for a July 25 work session.Commissioners received cost estimates from the district’s engineer for a number of possible solutions, ranging from a one million gallon capacity steel reservoir to a three million prestressed concrete one. While commissioners took no formal action, the concensus appeared to be in favor of constructing the latter option at an estimated cost of $2,964,000.

“Then we can talk about partnerships and funding,” said Anderson.
Stanton Properties, the developer proposing to build 80 to 100 homes near Lily Point, has already offered, along with the golf course development, to pay for the additional storage in exchange for the water connections they need to build their planned unit developments.

“Developers are willing and can help solve this problem,” said Stanton Properties representative Randy Forsyth. Stanton’s proposal is to build the three million gallon tank on the golf course property or their own and deed the new facility to the water district.

In exchange both projects would take 20 of the existing connections available and would be issued certificates of availability for the remaining connections they need, 80 for Stanton and 60 for the golf course, contingent on the completion of the new storage tank.

“We would only take 40 of the existing connections for both of us and that would remove the big players from the allotment process,” Stanton said. As it stands, he pointed out, if the two developers are in the allotment process with other users they could conceivably be allocated most or all of the available connections. “Everyone would be mad,” Forsyth said.

Forsyth said they had not had an official response to their proposal from the water district, and were preparing a more detailed proposal for commissioners.

At the July 25 work session, commissioners discussed a letter the district had received from Stanton Properties reiterating its desire to work with the district. Commissioner Sue Johnson said “I love the concept. Get the developer out of the allotment process.”