Question about Water Price Increases

I noted that Michael Robichaud asked a question about water fees on an Rocky View Weekly article which was posted to the Village of Beiseker Facebook page, yesterday.  His question was;

The last part regarding water consumption is a little confusing.
How do you implement increases because of a lack of consumption on allotted water ?

The Village of Beiseker buys its water from the Aqua7 Regional Water Services Commission (A7RWSC).  The commission is made of seven municipalities; Acme, Beiseker, Irricana, Linden, Carbon, and the Counties of Kneehill and Rocky View.  The Commission buys its water from the Town of Drumheller. 

The water from the Drumheller treatment plant is sent to the Aqua7 pumping station at Kirkpatrick.  From there it is treated then pumped out of the valley, first to Carbon and Kneehill County, then to Acme.  There's a "T" in the pipe at Acme. Water goes to Linden and water flows to Beiseker and Irricana.

When this system was set up, years ago, A7RWSC said that they would purchase a set amount of water from Drumheller.  But we've never come close to purchasing that much water!  There's a couple of reasons for that;

• The price of water; although the cost of water from Drumheller is relatively low, the cost of supporting the A7RWSC pumps, treatment systems, and pipes is expensive. 
• Water conservation programs have been effective in convincing people to use less water.
• Rocky View County, although they are full member of A7RWSC, has yet to buy or sell any water at all!

Drumheller claims that its system is geared to provide much more water than A7RWSC is buying.  Supporting that system to provide that unsold capacity is costing Drumheller extra, therefore they are passing that extra cost on to those who buy water from them, i.e. A7RWSC. 

We're expecting up to a 20% increase in the price of water from the Drumheller treatment plant.  That works out to about an 18 cents a cubic metre of water increase over the next few years.

The A7RWSC is trying to keep the price of pumping, treating, and transporting water to as low as possible.

How can the price of water go down?  The price of water can go down if the A7RWSC sells more water.  That means the A7RWSC  has to find more customers for its water! They're working on that.

Keeping Beiseker's Water Flowing

My second issue is water!  We in Beiseker have difficulties getting inexpensive drinking water into the village - and getting storm water out! 

Drinking Water

Beiseker is a member of the Aqua7 Regional Water Services Commission.  The commission buys treated water from the town of Drumheller, treats it again, then pumps it through to two rural municipalities and five urban municipalities from a treatment and pumping station at Kirkpatrick, in the Red Deer river valley.

Beiseker buys water from Aqua7, then treats it a third time, before pumping it out to our residents from a pumping station at the corner of 9th Street and 4th Avenue.

The price of water at our homes is controlled by four factors;

1. The price the Town of Drumheller charges Aqua7 for water.
2. The cost of operating the pumping station at Kirkpatrick.
3. The cost of managing the Aqua7 Regional Water Services Commission, including servicing their huge debt created during construction of the system.
4. The cost of re-treating and pumping water after it arrives here in the village.

Facts;

• The Town of Drumheller raised its price of water to Aqua7 twice in the last two years - totalling 10%!
• Rocky View County is a full member of Aqua7, but has not bought or sold any water!

I believe that Beiseker Village Council must keep working to lower our water rates by;

• Helping to find ways which Rocky View County can sell water.  The more water sold means a lower rate for all of us.
• Making sure all the water Beiseker buys is sold; no leaks or bypassed meters.
• Continuing to pressure the provincial government to help us eliminate our huge debt as they verbally promised to do when the project was first proposed.  They have done that for other water commissions set up after Aqua 7!

I have been very close to this water issue ever since Aqua7 (which was originally called the Kneehill Regional Water Services Commission) was first proposed.  I took over from past Mayor Dave Fegan as a member of the commission, twelve years ago.

With your vote, I will continue to fight for our right to have safe, plentiful and inexpensive drinking water here in Beiseker.


Storm Water

Beiseker was built in a low spot here on the prairie.  As a result, we continue to have storm water and runoff water issues.

The situation has greatly improved over the past few years but there are still shortcomings within our system.  Council has initiated a program to allow water to leave town as quickly as possible, by clearing drainage ditches and installing lift pumps at low spots.

With your vote, I will continue to work toward perfecting our drainage system so that floodwaters will drain more quickly from our village and the impact on residents will be lessened.

More Aqua7 Water Woes

At last Monday's Council meeting I voiced my concern that the Town of Drumheller had raised their water rates to the Aqua7 Regional Water Services Commission by 10% over the past two years. They have asked for part of this increase to start in July of this year, even though our contract with them stipulates increases must take effect in January of each year.

It appears everything costs more these days, but I'm wondering if such a huge increase in water rates from Drumheller is really necessary.  I hope that we will be able to meet with representatives from Drumheller in the near future to discuss these increases.  They need to explain to us why such an increase is necessary at this point in time.

I and the rest of the Aqua 7 water commission need to know that the increases in the water rates will be used to pay for upgrades in the water treatment plant and its supply line to our Kirkpatrick reservoir - and not to upgrade the water supply infrastructure within the Town of Drumheller.  We also need to know that we are getting a wholesale rate on our cost of water from Drumheller, and not a different retail rate.

It has been suggested (again) that Beiseker might be able to go back on its well water system if Aqua7 water becomes too expensive.  In my opinion, though, that possibility is totally out of the question.  The aquafer from which Beiseker drew its water from has been severely depleted by increased use over the past ten years.  Without drilling a series of new (and expensive) wells, I doubt we could pull enough water out of the aquafer to supply our growing community. 

We also signed a contract with Aqua7 at its conception that we would do our part in supporting the system and paying down its debt.  We would still be responsible for our share of the debt as agreed to in that agreement, even if we stopped using the pipeline.

I truly believe that Aqua7 Regional Water Services Commission will continue to grow and prosper.  I am sure Rocky View County will be able to buy and sell Aqua7 water in the future.  I am confident that the provincial government will one day finally wake up, smell the coffee and realize they treated the Aqua7 folks very, very badly and make amends as recommended in their own study made a few years ago!

Water Rates in Beiseker

As you may know, the Aqua 7 Regional Water Services Commission received a grant from the Alberta government to refinance their loan about two years ago.  Most of that money went to pay the penalties for refinancing.

Aqua 7's loan has been amortized over a longer period of time, though, and the payments are far less than we had before.  Thus, the price of water to Beiseker (and other communities) from Aqua 7 has dropped by a small amount.

I made a motion in Council to pass some of that saving on to the water users here in the village, but my motion was defeated by council.  Other councilors felt that the decrease would be insignificant and lower the user-pay amount for water in the village.

Right now, it costs the village more money to provide water services than is recovered through the sale of water.  That shortfall is drawn from General Revenue.  Leaving our water rates where they are, will allow more money to be applied to our water services - and therefore less money taken from general revenue.

To put this whole thing in perspective, though, we're paying just over three dollars per cubic meter for water.  That means a tank full of water 1 meter high, by 1 meter long, by 1 meter wide, cost just over three dollars.  A cubic meter of water is about 1,000 litres, or over 260 gallons - so that works out to just a little over one cent a gallon.

But, it is true that many other communities in the province are paying far less than we are.

Very Short Town Hall Meeting!

Lasting less than an hour, I think that was the shortest Town Hall meeting I've ever attended! 

We only had about a dozen folks attend our second annual Town Hall meeting at the Community Centre. The crowd was small, but the questions were good! We had questions about the repairs on Main Street, water rates, storm water drainage, and sidewalk replacement.  I think we were able to answer all the questions well.

Over the next few days, I will try and address each area of concern here on my blog.

And I want to thank those people who gave up part of their Monday evening to join as at the town hall meeting. I very much appreciate your participation!

Water Under the Bridge

I think I was the Beiseker councillor referred to by former Irricana councillor Frank Dusome, in a recent post he made on the Irricana Ratepayers web site.  I do recall discussing with him the fact that our village was buying much more water than we were selling.

What happened, there?  First and foremost, our Public Works department found and repaired a number of major leaks in the village's distribution pipes.

We also found that there were many water users in our community who were not paying their fair share, through no fault of their own. Our water metering system at that time was old and corroded.  In some cases, the meter was reading inaccurately or almost not at all.

This meant that some water users were paying the minimum on their bill when they were using much more water.  Our billing system at the time didn't pick up on the discrepancies.

I am pleased to report that we have since replaced our water metering system throughout the village with new digitized models! These new meters are very accurate and automatically relay their reading to a computer carried in a public works vehicle as it goes around town. The new meters are also tamper-proof.

I don't know if some of the highest water users in the village had inaccurate meters, but I'm very confident today that all water users in the village are now paying for what they use.

Good News from Aqua 7

Last night's Aqua 7 Regional Water Services Commission meeting was full of good news!

• The price of Aqua 7 water to communities will drop on August 1, 2012 to $2.67 per cubic meter.  Each community will still have to charge something to pump the water around their municipality, but I'm hoping everyone will see a price-per-cubic meter drop on their water bills later this summer!
• The Town of Drumheller has reversed their earlier decision (which I blogged about here), and have now agreed to adjust the boundaries of the Commission to cover the north-eastern part of Rocky View County.  This means Rocky View County now has a chance to sell some of the water they've beeen paying for!  Wow! This is fantastic news!  Thank you to Mayor Yemen and Drumheller town council!
• The line repair we went through last month turned out to be far less serious and less expensive than predicted.  We did purchase a new valve but it wasn't needed so we'll keep it in storage.   
• The refinancing of our debt over a longer period of time has reduced our yearly payments by about $300,000 a year!

It was so refreshing to attend an Aqua 7 meeting and hear all that good news! More details will come out later but I had to tell you that things are looking up for the Regional Water Service!

Have a good weekend!

Water Rates

Some of you were surprised at the cost of water here in Beiseker, that was mentioned in the Mountain View Gazette article published yesterday.  Others asked me how our rates compared to other communities in Alberta.

Here's the scoop;

• Beiseker = $4.18 for one cubic metre (m³) of water (close to 220 gallons)
• Irricana = $3.00 per m³
• Hanna = $2.30 per m³
• Didsbury = $2.20 per m³
• Carstairs = $2.00 per m³
• Edmonton = $1.60 per m³  (for first 60 m³) \ $1.66 per m³  (over 60 m³)
• Calgary = $1.48  per m³
• Drumheller = $1.34 per m³
• Airdrie = $0.98 per m³
• Red Deer = $0.74  per m³

There are many others and there are even cheaper rates.  I'll post them when I find them.