Agenda - 10-30-2002 - 1 (AOG) - Laserfiche WebLink

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Bernadette Pellisier, Chair of the OWASA Board 3 Eric Peterson, Town of Hillsborough Manager Joe Phelps, Mayor of Hillsborough Margaret Pollard, Chatham County Commissioner Terry Roland, City of Durham Environmental Resources Director Darrell Russell, City of Mebane Engineer Ron Singleton, Chatham County Public Works Director Marshall Staton, Pearson Equipment, Architects and Engineers— Representing Orange-Alamance Bill Strom, Chapel Hill Town Council Member Clark Thomas, Pierce and Whitman - Representing Orange-Alamance Water System Robert Wilson, City Manager of Mebane Chair Jacobs recognized Orange County Manager John Link and Carrboro Manager Bob Morgan. 2. PUBLIC WATER UTILITY PROVIDERS PRESENTATION/REPORT A. Town of Hillsborough—Eric Peterson For quite a few years now, we have been purchasing water from the City of Durham up until the past year, and we have an interconnection with them and purchase water during times of drought and to meet our peak demands. We just completed construction of a reservoir about a year ago. As of today, it is about 65-70%full. We are hoping that will be enough to get us through the summer without having to purchase any more water from Durham during peak situation. Even though we have just completed the first of two phases of the reservoir, we are projecting, based on the current scenario of current customers and obligatory customers that we have already signed water and sewer contracts with, that the capacity will probably be eaten up in a period of three to five years, depending on what the growth scenario looks like. Once you take the obligatory customers, we probably have room for another 600-700 residential units in Hillsborough, or that type of an equivalent. Unfortunately, we spent a lot of money on the reservoir and we could be reaching peak capacity. What this means is in that three to five-year period, it may be one day per year, it may be a dozen days per year, but we need to purchase water from someone else because we cannot meet our peak demands. So we will have the choice in a few years whether or not we want to purchase water again from Durham or OWASA, or go ahead and proceed with the second phase of our reservoir project and our water plant, which have to be done simultaneously. So we get a double whammy at one time, we cannot do one without the other. Once that phase II expansion is completed, we can go ahead and probably go another 10 years under an aggressive growth scenario, 15 years under a more modest growth scenario. So even under modest and controlled growth conditions, we are going to be looking at a need for a long-term water source in the 15-year range. We are still reeling from the cost of our first reservoir and are going to try to delay these expansions as long as we can so we can build up some additional capital facility fees to make it a little more manageable. As the Mayor mentioned, we are doing everything we can to stabilize our water rates, as they have been going up considerably in recent years. That is what we are bringing to the table, we have a Band-aid approach for the next 10-15 years. Thereafter, we are going to need some help and we are willing to cooperate with our neighbors and hope that somebody in here may be able to help us out in the long run. Chair Jacobs: Can you give us a little detail about capacity in terms of numbers of gallons? Eric Peterson: Sure. I have a handout that has some detailed information about capacity. We currently have 3 mgd plants and under stage II water restrictions, that combined with the reservoir output, we can yield just under three million gallons a day. With the reservoir coming on line, we were about reaching plant capacity. As far as getting into the phase Il, that will add another 1.2 million gallons per day when that takes place. The unfortunate thing about Flynt Fabrics leaving town a couple of years ago was we lost 20% of our revenue overnight. The customers felt that immediately. Our use is down now to about 1.1 mgd and peak days are at about 1.9 mgd. We do have a fair amount of development that has been approved outside of Hillsborough that has yet to come online that we are capable of servicing. So we have a fair amount of water that is available, it is just earmarked to different developments. Chair Jacobs: And you have purchased water from Durham before and sold to Orange- Alamance before, is that correct?