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I wrote about the East Central Regional Wastewater Treatment Facility back in October that is situated on 360 acres and is located on Haverhill Road, adjacent to the Florida turnpike in West Palm Beach. There are four cities (Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, Riviera Beach and Lake Worth) plus Palm Beach County that oversee this plant that takes our wastewater, treats it and then processes it by removing the pollutants and debris. It is all disinfected before it is discharged.
I arrived at the end of the meeting last night at the point where the Lake Worth commission had already made a motion and were waiting to vote. It was a 4 to 1 decision with Commissioner Christopher McVoy dissenting. His argument was why would the commission vote for the more expensive option. Good Question. Why did it?
ECR's board is issuing bonds totaling $115 million to update its water treatment plant that will include a pelletizer plant that converts sludge into pellets that can be sold and used as fertilizer. By building their own pelletizer plant at a cost of $24 million, the ECR says it will save us $200,000 a year every year for twenty years from what the SWA charges and allow us to have control over costs. Not surprising, the SWA disagrees.
#1: Option to stay with Solid Waste Authority
Capital cost: $13,532,00
Net present operating costs: $56,360,000
Total present worth costs: $69,892,000
#2 Option to have onsite drying facility at the ECR
Capital costs: $24,140,000
Net present operating costs: $41,380,000
Total present worth costs: $65,520,000
Our Commission had plenty of time to get the information it needed to make an informed decision but instead complained about the lack of information. Even future sewage costs could have been explored but weren't. Why not? Once again, the Commission took the easy choice--invest in a capital project and save money and contain future costs or stay with what they had. This will be indicative of how they make their decision on our power provider. They did the same thing on the Greater Bay settlement--played it safe.
The difference is $4.3 million DOLLARS more to stay with SWA and that's what the four Lake Worth commissioners just did--voted to spend more of your money.
I will have to listen to the audio to try and determine why they voted the way in which they did. Did they get opinions from the municipalities and why they were leaning the way they were? Did they bother to confer with the other partners to get a feel of it all?
I have to wonder if Lake Worth business owner and West Palm Beach Commissioner Shanon Materio had shared her hesitations/concerns with our majority commission. West Palm Beach had postponed its Monday meeting on this decision. Riviera Beach and Palm Beach were the only municipalities out of five (Palm Beach County, West Palm Beach, Lake Worth, Riviera Beach, and Palm Beach) that wanted to build the new plant.
5 comments:
Lynn the numbers just did not add up on this one. There is so much to this that did not reach the public's eyes.Ther was a rush to build at any cost when it was not necessary. The fact that WPB Commissioner Materio asked the right questions changed the numbers quite a bit to the down side. The city of WPB had already voted no on this issue weeks ago. No vote was set for Monday Night.It seens that it was put on the agenda in error. Which also seemed strange.If you do more research on this subject it will make more sense to not build something that already exists just to put money in the pockets of consultants, engineers and unions. Don't forget the city of WPB was to run this facility and that they don't have a great track record of running their water utility department.Remmember the foul smelling water in the college park area.
Yes, you could be 100% right, however, SWA costs will go up too and once again we have lost control on costs. I would have loved to have learned of the arguments from the cities both pro and con as we, apparently, did not have enough information to make an informed decision.
I think Mcvoy just wanted more information to justify the millions more in costs.
You are right Lynn everyone needed more info. Something that the ECR people were reluctant to give out.They had 800 pages of info yet showed a presentation of about 5 slides.The cost of construction will also go up on the ECR facility. Just look at what we learned about the Casino project. Plus the ECR was going to self insure the facility which means that any mishap could cost millions, and dealing with something as tricky as superheated waste material it is possible that something could go wrong as it did with SWA. However the company that runs that facility was insured.Don't think that the ECR cost won't go up over time what with raises and union pensions and other hidden cost. I don't think we have heard the last of this.I think the ECR will again come back with different numbers. They want to build it.The city did not have to be a part of a 115 million dollar bond float. We have enough on our minds what with the electric issues coming up. Let's not risk our bond rating on something we do not need.
How can LW possibly make the correct decision when it didn't have any info and didn't check with the other cities? This is how we do business in LW and why we get into so much trouble. Hopefully this time the guess was right. When in doubt, vote no.
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