Letters to the Editor

Friends of Blue Hole question new sewer plan

Friends of Blue Hole Meets With Mayor

Mayor Jaggers met Friends of Blue Hole Board members. The following are my understanding of her positions and the facts surrounding her AT Plan. She clarified her AT plan is temporary, merely delaying the city-owned treatment plant, paying Aqua Texas a pittance to treat the downtown wastewater for no more than 5 years (The Mayor’s AT Plan).

She also explained we needn’t be alarmed over her instruction that City Administrator Cox reduce the parks department funding to zero while increasing fees and cutting services. That was only a tactic to get everyone’s attention. I understand she’s withdrawn that instruction and intends to propose council re-fund the parks department every year for any debt-service funds transferred to the utility department.

What I now understand from the Mayor about her AT Plan:

1. Nothing, or almost nothing, in the Mayor’s AT Plan is in writing. Her plan is only to DELAY the treatment plant construction for no more than 5 years. She’s persuaded AT to treat all the waste water for a $54,000 flat fee for up to 5 years. And she’ll get Black Castle to construct the plant later for the same cost (well, unless materials cost more in the future). While AT will provide a lot of free stuff to the City, including free treated water to Blue Hole Park, the City will pay the $300,000 needed to upgrade AT’s treatment plant so it can produce Type 1-enhanced water.

2. Why should we delay the city-owned plan? I understood the Mayor has two reasons:

A. The city-owned plan cannot, today, generate sufficient user revenue to pay the debt service plus operating cost. But, within 5 years, the City will have the funds to build its own treatment plant AND pay operating costs and debt service.

NOTE: The Mayor does NOT say there are insufficient funds to complete the project. This is not about capital funding, but about annual operating costs.

B. No discharge.

I understand that under the Mayor’s AT Plan:

3. AT will treat the wastewater to the Type 1-enhanced standard required

1) in the City’s settlement agreement with Paradise Hills and others, and 2) by the TWDB.

4. AT will give FREE Type1-enhanced effluent to Blue Hole Park.

6. AT will pay most or all of the costs to pipe raw sewage from the Square, under Cypress Creek, to AT’s existing line. The cost to run the sewage line under Cypress Creek, and who will pay, are unknown (in 2013, AT projected that cost to be $450,000).

7. The Scott Johnson family will donate an easement to get the sewage from its side of the creek to AT’s line.

8. Wimberley ISD benefits from having Type 1-enhanced effluent to irrigate its new school at the Bypass and RR 12, so Superintendent York might pay some of the $300,000 in item 1.

9. TCEQ has verbally approved tunneling under Cypress Creek to get the raw sewage to the AT line.

10. The City can charge users the difference between AT’s $54,000/year wholesale rate and the City’s retail rate; that difference will be used to service the debt (approximately $240,000/ year).

11. My understanding is the Mayor believes the City cannot afford to pay the debt service plus operating costs. She says current projected operating costs are wrong--they will be $250,000/ year instead of $172,000. The City cannot afford that $250,000, but can afford the $54,000 to AT.

12. The City can save, toward paying for its delayed plant, the $200,000/ year difference between its $250,000 operating cost and the $54,000 AT will charge. But see item 10--is this $200,000/year being double counted?

Additionally, I believe:

13. The Mayor expressly concedes her AT Plan requires formal TCEQ and TWDB, EDA and Way Family approval, despite the delays/changes; and

14. The Mayor concedes that a significant cost of NOT building the cityowned plant now is the superfluous $1M cost to run a treated-water line along The Bypass from RR 12 to Blue Hole Park. Once the City builds its own plant, that line has no value to the project.

Note: The rumor that the Mayor is instigating, or supports, any move to transfer Blue Hole Park ownership to the County is completely false, the Mayor said. Maybe that was just Lila McCall getting excited.

Some outstanding questions/concerns I have after our meeting:

1. Why would AT do so much for free and treat water at a fixed cost for 5 years?

2. How long will it take to get TCEQ, TWDB, and other stake holders to have meetings and agree to the proposed delay and changes? Can these approvals be obtained without causing any material delays to the project?

3. The Mayor’s annual operating cost “savings” seem illusory. The Mayor says we can’t afford the annual operating costs. If we can’t afford the $200,000 difference she projects between the city-owned plant and AT, we can’t save it each year.

4. So what’s left to build the $3.6M+ plant within 5 years? Seems to be $2.3M or less, plus something.

- $2.3M (at best). Net money “saved” by not building the plant today ($3.6M plant cost “saved,” less $300,000 to upgrade AT’s plant, less $1M to run a reclaimed water line along the Bypass);

- Plus something (for collection system savings, but any collection system savings apply to either plan)

Editorial:

It blinks reality to think AT will engage with the City for no more than 5 years when it is agreeing to trench, lay pipe, and provide free treated water to Blue Hole Park. If it seems too good to be true, . . .

Even if the Mayor is correct that her “temporary delay” has no permit, engineering, or legal costs, her AT Plan still comes up at least $1.3M short ($2.3M vs. $3.6M).

Is this newest “short term, temporary” twist in the Mayor’s AT Plan the old camel’s-nose-under-thetent? No suggestion the Mayor is being disingenuous. But I question whether AT and others will, or currently intend to, go away in 5 years or less.

I ask the current council to require the due diligence it alleges previous councils failed to do--you and we need to see TCEQ, TWDB, EDA, and Peter Way approvals and, most important of all, the written proposal from AT with all the freebies and the fixed $54,000/ year the Mayor has negotiated--with clear language that the City is out in 5 years or less. Until Friends of Blue Hole see the Mayor’s AT Plan in writing, with those attachments, insuring the City will ultimately be in control of its own fate with Type 1-enhanced water to Blue Hole Park, we cannot support of the Mayor’s AT Plan.

Andrew Weber

Chair, Friends of Blue Hole Foundation