Cameron Water Rates don’t just affect city residents…Welcome to PWSD #3

Cameron —As the City locked in water rates at the last City Council meeting, Cameron residents know they will see a substantial increase in the water bills they are beginning to receive now.

As the tap is turned on on the Great Northwest Wholesale Water pipeline, ostensibly this April, everyone who receives City water…local residents, Clinton County Rural Water District #3 and rural residents outside the City limits will see those big jumps.

In a discussion last week with Clinton County Rural Water District General Manager Bill Gitthens told the Citizen-Observer that PWSD #3 customers received the same surprise everyone else did…after the fact, forcing some long days in trying to apply the new rates and figure bills on the 1,480 active connections in the Water District.

They learned of the rate increase through local media.  According to Gitthens, the PWSD received no heads-up  at any point in the run-up to finalization of rates at the last Council meeting.

Yikes.

Gitthens said that rates received from the City will result in an added payout to the City of approximately $16,000 per month and an additional expense of $250,000 per year.

The rates figure PWSD usage of approximately 6-million gallons for the year.

Rates did stand at $18 for the first 0-1,000 gallons of usage, $11 for the next thousand gallons, and $10.50 per thousand thereafter.

Gitthens reported the updated rates Wednesday, as follows:

$20 for 0-1000 gallons

$17.55 for 1,001-2,000 gallons

$15.55 for 2,001 gallons plus

The average customer in PWSD #3 will use 5,000 gallons at an overall rate of $84.20 per month.

The PWSD includes 1,480 customers, manages two pumping stations and two water towers which hold 250,000 gallons in each tower.

CC PWSD#3 is, if not the City of Cameron’s largest customer,. In the top three.  City Utilities Interim Director Mark Morey told the Citizen-Observer that the City’s “customer breakdown” lays out thus:

Residential:  2,674 total customers within City limits

Small Commercial:  222 customers

Large Commercial:  129 customers

Industrial:  7 customers

The Rural Water District currently connects to the City’s water system by seven connections, according to Morey, connecting to their 1,480 PWSD customers..  35 identified rural customers pay double the city resident rate to start.  

Currently, Gitthens reports that the PWSD  has no direct option to any other water source or provider in the area.  That wouldn’t necessarily stop the Rural Water District from shopping around if it felt it was necessary.

“We are dependent on Cameron City Water, but we are not obligated to it.”Gitthens said. 

He understands that the pipeline is going to come online, and that by MDA and USDA requirements that all customers will receive their water from the Pipeline, which, by regulation, must provide at least 50% of the water the City provides.

Cameron currently relies on the water supply from its four reservoirs, Center Lake, Sunrise Lake, Grindstone Lake and Eagle Lake, which are not stream or naturally fed, but watershed water sources that are fairly shallow to begin with, and, with age and any lack of maintenance, can quickly silt over.

The pipeline, which has been a twenty-year project and will be featured in a second article next week, is one of a kind in the state, and may be a model for future pipelines across the Country.

“I believe that the future of water distribution will be that water cooperatives, formed along the lines of rural electric cooperatives will become the norm,”  Gitthens said.

The GNWWW commission’s source is not a lake, a stream or the Missouri River.  It is an “alluvial aquifer” or underground lake, not unlike the Ogallala aquifer which feeds Nebraska’s Lake McConaughey and the Platte River.  

The Northwest Missouri alluvial aquifer is on a much smaller scale, but still capable of yielding between 500 to more than 2,000 gallons of water per minute.

While the pipeline’s overall cost is currently at $45-million, with Cameron and its customers holding a 94% stake (and debt to service as well), the City has still not received an amortization schedule from Great Northwest to know exactly what the monthly obligation is.  It is known, in generalities, that the City is obligated to pay $1.8 million towards the pipeline for 2025 when the water starts flowing, and $2.8 million per year beginning next year.

That unnerving detail will be studied in the follow-on article next week.