Lake Worth - 2" watermains

Comment Up

Peter Timm and Mary Watson--

silent demonstration last night against city privatizing our beach
 and secret meetings

Last night, Larry Johnson, Director of our Water Department gave his presentation on the 2" water line replacement for 17 miles of roads within our city. We have heard this presentation before during the Lake Worth 2020 presentation. Staff came with rusty pipes and cloudy water to make its point--"We need to do this."

The first work would start in College Park where the mayor can't drink the stuff--too nasty with chlorine. The Vice Mayor pitched for District 1 to be next on the six year cycle as it will have the most work done. Former commissioner of district 1, Retha Lowe, was there to listen. At the moment, the schedule for this replacement work is District 4, 3, 2 and 1 and the Director did not say whether this would be changed.

• Alley water piping construction cost: $6,545,000

• Easement water piping construction cost: $5,490,000

• Road water piping construction cost: $1,566,000

• Engineering/survey: $2,460,000

• Loan fees and Reserves: $746,000

• TOTAL COST: 16,806,000

However, the city has funded $828,000 and that amount will be reduced from the above total.

The Water Distribution System consists of 157 miles of watermains ranging in size from 36-inch to 2- inch diameter. There are approximately 23 miles of 2-inch watermain. The 2-inch watermains are generally constructed of galvanized steel with internal and external corrosion resulting in poor water quality and reliability issues. The city plans to replace only 17 miles with 4" pvc. No one on the dais asked about the other 140 miles that are larger than 2". Are they in good shape?  How many are steel and are corroding? Have some caused problems or already been replaced?  If so, where?  How many miles? etc. The watermains are breaking more often, and we have spent $23,000 in yearly overtime labor repairing the breaks but it never was mentioned the cost of supplies to repair those breaks. 

The five financing options were read from the Power Point presentation. There was not one question from the dais on what it was going to cost all the rate payers in the city on their water bill for those 17 miles by going with Option 4, the State Revolving Fund Loan, staff's recommendation. A huge majority of our streets (140 miles of watermains) will not be affected by these replacements.

A chart was provided in the presentation that showed a water increase through year 2024 of 45.08%. So what will happen here is that the bigger users of water such as the condos, whose residents are retirees who live along Lake Osborne Drive and whose pipes will NOT be replaced and have no alleyways, will be greatly impacted on their water bill and greatly subsidizing this project.

Funding for the project has been recommended by staff and is staggered SRF borrowing from year 2016 through year 2020 and the anticipated rate adjustments are a 4.50% for 2016, 4.00% for year 2017 and 3.5% for 2018 through 2024 that will help pay for it. The replacement piping will last 30-50 years. The term of this loan (30 plus years--(36 years from the last borrowing)) was never mentioned nor was it asked from the dais.