Around 18 million gallons of potable water leaked into the ground this fall at the Payette Lake Recreational Water and Sewer District treatment facility, and now the district needs to dip into reserves to pay its water bill.
A leak in July previously left the sewer district with a more than $3,000 water bill from the city. City code allows forgiveness of one excessive monthly bill due to a leak per year, which McCall approved.
“Then the second leak occurred, and it was underneath a large pile of dirt not readily visible,” city treasurer Linda Stokes told council members during a meeting last month.
The second leak, discovered in late September, led to more than $75,000 in water bills for the district. Typical monthly water bills for the district are under $1,000 this time of year.
The city council in October approved forgiving the approximately $55,000 September bill instead of the smaller July one from the first leak. But the second leak spilled into October’s billing period; it wasn’t fixed until Oct. 10, and the sewer district owes more than $22,000 for its October water use.
City code governing forgiveness is clear, councilors noted. Their flexibility allowed a swap to forgive the larger bill, but not more. And the city has costs to cover for delivery of all that water.
“We're probably covering our expenses a little bit,” Mayor Bob Giles said during the October discussion, before the district’s water use that month was known. “And across the three months, July, September, October, we're alleviating them from something that was far, far excessive. I think it's a fair solution and it stays within our ordinance.”
Payette Lake sewer district manager Jeff Bateman said they’ll have to use reserves to pay the bill.
“We’ve got a fairly good reserve, but any time you take $22,000 out of there, it affects us.”
He said reserves are typically used for emergency repairs of aging equipment like pumps.
A newly proposed sewer district master plan could address the system’s many aging components. The plan proposes $55 million in spending over 20 years to meet wastewater demands of the growing community.
