Chris Landry [email protected] Staff reports
St. Martinville – The St. Martin Parish Consolidated Water District No. 4 board voted 4-1 in favor of a resolution setting water rates for the district at the board’s June meeting held this past Tuesday at the St. Martin Parish Government Annex Building’s Carrol J. Fuselier Meeting Room.
Residential rates were set at a flat rate of $18 for the first 2,000 gallons used and $4 per 1,000 gallons beyond that.
Commercial rates were set at a flat rate of $36 for the first 5,000 gallons used and $7 for each 1,000 gallons beyond that.
Those rates are pending approval by the state’s Water Sector Commission, and were based on a study by EisnerAmper, an independent firm comparing rates to rates for similar communities’ water districts, and on the Water Sector requirements that state the district must meet its operating costs plus have a 15 percent residual put aside each month.
“We were mandated to go out to a third party (for the study), and compiling all the information from Catahoula, the Industrial Park and the City of St. Martinville, they came up with a rate study,” St. Martin Parish President Pete Delcambre said.
In a nutshell, Delcambre told the board, the district must take in about $5 per 1,000 gallons of water produced in order to break even.
Based on the numbers provided by the three districts that will become consolidated into one district — St. Martinville, St. Martin Water District No. 4 (the Catahoula area) and the St. Martin Industrial Park water district — that averages out to the rates that were proposed in the resolution.
EisnerAmper’s proposed rates for the new consolidated water district are about in the middle of the seven nearby water districts that are currently doing rate studies — Duson, Erath, Jeanerette, Maurice, Southeast Waterworks 2 and Waterworks District 1, both in Abbeville, along with the consolidated St. Martin district.
The average residential customer in the district uses about 4,500 gallons of water a month, Delcambre said, and at the proposed rate, that would be $28 a month charged by consolidated water district.
St. Martinville residents will see their bills go up about $6 a month, and Catahoula residents will see their bills rise about 85 cents a month as a result.
“I’m very pleased that the numbers are not astronomical, and that we do line up with the other entities in the area,” Delcambre said.
Commercial user rates go up more, Delcambre said, largely because the current rates are not sufficient to meet the breakeven numbers required by the state.
Board members had questions about the proposed rates, and how they were achieved. Delcambre was asked why the proposed rate would charge $4 a gallon for amounts over the initial 2,000 gallons instead of charging $5 per thousand gallons.
Delcambre said the $18 flat rate for the first 2,000 gallons allowed the district to charge only $4 per additional 1,000 gallons and still meet the state’s requirements for covering expenses plus a 15 percent additional revenue raised.
“We hedged it over for the first 2,000 gallons, and then backed it off on the price per thousand thereafter,” he said. “When you aggregate it, we were able to cover the $5 plus give us the additional moneys to achieve the 15 percent residual on the back end.”
St. Martin Parish Councilwoman Carla Jean-Batiste, who attended the meeting, suggested charging $5 a gallon instead of $4 a gallon for amounts over the initial 2,000 gallons. In the case of people whose water runs constantly because of a stuck toilet valve or a leak, she said, the district might lose money by charging only $4 per 1,000 gallons over the initial 2,000 gallons.
Board member Charles “Chuck” Latiolais said he has had that issue himself where he’s left water running and that can lead to high water usage, and said he wants to be sure the district isn’t losing money in those cases.
“I don’t think we ought to be making up a bunch of money but we ought to make sure we break out even on that water,” he said.
Engineer Nick Sonnier of Sellers & Associates said that if the rate for additional gallons used was changed to $5, the flat rate would have to be lowered, probably to $15 for the first 2,000 gallons, in order to meet approval by the Water Sector Commission.
St. Martinville Mayor Jason Willis said that the water district will collect its money but that the sewer treatment entity — the City of St. Martinville in this case — could end up taking a loss if it has to process two days worth of additional water flowing into the sewers because of a leaking toilet or a leak in someone’s pipes.
Pam Granger of McBade Engineers & Consultants said that the automatic meters the district is installing and the software that monitors water usage, the district will have the capability to run daily reports each morning to show if a customer has water running for more than four hours as might be the case of a running toilet or a leak.
Rates
In those cases the water district operators could call the customer to see if they realize they have water running that long, so that bills don’t run up too much in the case of a leak.
“At least with the automatic meters and with the software system, the operators of your system will be able to monitor it better than when it’s the ones where you have to go out there (to check the meter),” Granger said.
That also allows operators to notify people who are running water during freezes that they are running the water at too high a rate, she said.
Board member Danny Bulliard expressed concerns about the commercial rates, which he said would impact his family’s business, Cajun Chef tremendously. He asked why the commercial rate was for $7 per gallon over the initial 5,000 gallons used, and not at $4 as residential customers are charged.
Delcambre said that if the commercial rate is lowered, residential customers would have to be charged more to absorb the difference and keep the water district in the black.
“How do you know how much water we will use, if we have 3 million gallons or 1 million gallons?” Bulliard asked.
Sonnier said the study was based on the numbers provided by the three current water districts, and that the consolidated district can only go by the numbers provided to it.
Bulliard said that Cajun Chef is in dispute over the amount of water it is using currently.
“So the information you have might not be right?” he asked.
“It’s the best available information that we were able to gather from the three parties, and it’s what we have to work with,” Sonnier said. “I can’t help that. I have no other information to base it off of.”
Delcambre said that because the rates were based on a third-party study, he thought the Water Sector Commission would approve the resolution presented to it by the waterworks board. If not, the resolution included language that would allow it to adjust the rates to meet the water sector board’s approval.
The board approved the resolution with Bulliard voting against it.
“Cajun Chef would have to pay $540,000 a year for water?” he said. “I think that’s a little much.”
Engineer updates
Granger said the plans and specifications for Water Well No. 3 were sent to the state for approval and bids for the water well were to open this past Wednesday.
Preconstruction meetings also were set or were being set for work on the elevated water tank rehab, for distribution system/ waterline construction, and for or replacement of meters, she said.
Sonnier said the Industrial Park contractor has begun construction on that project, and the waterline contractor will come in some time in July for work on the new water well lines.
Ronald Daigle of Waterworks District 4, who will be the consolidated district’s water manager, said water storage has been good in Catahoula and customer reports have been sent out for the Industrial Park and for Catahoula.
The plant has been running well, he said, with no calls about color in the water. Lines are flushed in the case of color in the water or chlorine residuals, which sometimes happens with naturally occurring ammonia eating up the chlorine in the water, usually in hotter weather.
Jonathan Vining, manager of the water system in St. Martinville and the water manager for the consolidated district, discussed higher water usage in the city which is leading to the wells running for longer periods daily.
In the summer, the well usually runs for about 13-14 hours a day but it is currently running for about 20-21 hours a day.
The city seems to be losing about 360,000 gallons of water through a leak somewhere, he said, leading to the higher run time for the well. Daigle said that once the well is running, it should not experience issues because the startup is what puts pressure on the well motors. The water system would like to run the well a little less, however, since the city’s second well cannot be used currently because of a leak in the casing.
The transmission lines and bayou crossings have been checked for leaks, he said, but no major leaks have been found. The lines crossing the bayou will be shut off to see if that affects the water usage, he said.
Some leaks have been found and fixed or are in the process of being fixed, Vining added.
Once the consolidated system has a third well up and the casing on the second well is fixed, those issues should be resolved.
Plans also are in the works to section off the city so that shutoff valves can be used to isolate segments of the city in case leaks need to be fixed, without shutting off service to the entire city, Vining said.
On Thursday, Vining reported that an 8-inch line behind St. Martinville Senior High had been found to have a leak and that the city was looking to isolate and fix the leak. Vining credited board member Kirk Lasseigne for advice at the meeting on how to possibly find the leak that has been causing the water well to run those extra hours.
Other business
Delcambre told the board that the Water Sector board has tentatively accepted the proposal that the parish will send to the Billeaud family to secure rights to use property for a new water well and that the he hopes to have a lease proposal accepted by the Billeauds before the next monthly waterworks board meeting.
Securing servitude rights along the road to the property will take a little longer, Delcambre said, as the parish must deal with a number of property owners to secure those rights.
“Again, once that is secured, I would like to activate the intergovernmental agreements between the three entities involved in this project,” Delcambre said. “I’m looking forward to getting that behind us.”
