WEST ALEXANDRIA — West Alexandria Village Council held a special meeting on Monday, April 29, to discuss the Preble County Commissioners’ proposal to connect to the West Alexandria Waste Water Treatment Plant for Sewer District Six (SD6).
Council members indicated they would be interested in discussions and sharing numbers with the commissioners and CDM Smith to see if this merger is profitable for both parties.
“One of the options we have that is very close to being cost effective versus treating locally with [Preble County’s own] treatment plant is to regionalize with the West Alexandria treatment plant, especially since you’re expanding your own sewers. We have a couple questions that you need to consider to determine which is our most feasible option,” Fred Smith with CDM Smith said.
“There are a few technical issues — I’m assuming you’ll pass these onto your engineers. One is plant capacity and if you have the available capacity for our sewage. We would be looking in the way somewhere of 100,000 gallons a day to 125,000 gallons a day for an average daily flow. Our peak hourly flows from that, one is 333,000 gallons a day to 425,000 gallons a day roughly.
“I believe in talking to your village administrator, he believed they have the capacity in the plants, but I did not hear the numbers and did not want to short change the route directly to your engineer. I thought it was best to come to you first and have you work with your engineer,” Smith said.
“The other thing we’re looking at is the sewer use charges, what would you charge the residents of the Sewer District Six for your treatment costs?” he continued. “I did a little math on your current sewer charges, as they rate up. For 100,000 gallon a day flow, if we were sending that on a daily basis, using your current charges it would be right around $6,150 a month or about $74,000 a year. If we did the 125,000 gallons a day, it would be about $7,700 a month or about $92,000 a year.”
However, the village has recently implemented a rate increase. The village might also want to charge SD6 more, since they are out of town and the village currently charges out of town water users more than in town. This is all information CDM Smith would need to know to see if this merger is viable.
Commissioner Chris Day explained, the county needs this information from the Village of West Alexandria to see if it is an option to partner with them.
Smith added, there would usually be a sewer use charge for SD6 to connect to the system.
“I’ve said this before, but if it’s not a win-win we can’t do it. It can’t be lopsided one way or another,” Commissioner Rodney Creech said.
Commissioners asked for additional information within the next few weeks.
