This past week, there was a work session held by the Board of County Commissioners along with representatives from Troy and West Milton. At issue was the current state of water costs the County and West Milton pay for water from the City of Troy.
The Inequities of Water Cost Across Miami County
In 2022, the City of Piqua prepared a study showing water costs for various municipalities across southwest Ohio; one might be surprised to the wide variation of costs. Union came in the lowest at a rough monthly cost of $21 and Yellow Springs was the most expensive at a monthly cost of nearly $107.
Closer to home, Miami County jurisdictions were all over chart. Troy was lowest at a monthly cost of $45. Tipp City was close behind at $58. West Milton (which gets their water from Troy) was at $58. Covington was at $68. County residents who get water supplied from Troy were at $70 and Bethel Township residents have monthly costs at $75. Piqua, with a relatively new water treatment plant has a rough monthly cost of $96.
Of particular interest to the Board of Commissioners and West Milton was trying to find ways to reduce the costs of water to their customers. Both entities are currently the largest users of water from the City of Troy and for that privilege both Miami County and West Milton customers pay a 10% surcharge for the water they get. The 10% surcharge didn’t sit well with any of the County Commissioners. Commissioner Ted Mercer was quoted in the work session stating, “I don’t pay for the City of Troy to have a big savings account. I pay for quality service.”
And perhaps that is the rub. Both Miami County and West Milton are still responsible for their own utility metering and billing and to maintain and expand their own water pipes to serve their customer base; which causes those monthly rates to customers to grow even larger. If a water main decided to break on South Miami Street in downtown West Milton, the City of Troy isn’t going to show up to help. The only thing that Troy is responsible for is the water itself. At least in Troy, the typical water bill pays for the water, the pipes, the plant….the whole nine yards.
Where the Water Comes From
The City of Troy, like most communities up and down the Miami Valley, gets their water from a series of wells near the Great Miami River that plunge deep into the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer; one of the largest aquifers in the country, storing approximately 1.5 Trillion (!) gallons of water. The city’s well could pump out 16 million gallons of water each day, but the treatment plant could legitimately only process roughly 8 million gallons, but roughly puts out only about 3.5 million gallons of water each day.
New Communities Coming on Board
Water systems are hard to develop and hard to manage, especially smaller ones. Administrative excellence and water quality are sometimes hard for smaller water systems to achieve. In 2018 and 2021, the Village of Laura’s Water System failed to monitor for disinfection by-products and failed to issue public notifications for those violations.
In order to achieve economies of scale and to protect public health, smaller communities often work to get water from larger communities. Roughly twenty years ago, West Milton did just that by shuttering its old water treatment facility to get water from Troy. Casstown will probably be the next community online with centralized water once the County Commissioners finish a waterline extension from Troy east to the village.
New Providers As Well
And while new communities are coming online for large centralized water, there are more providers for water as well. Below is a map from the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission that outline “Facility Planning Areas”. These maps help individual communities delineate where water and sewer lines can do to help facilitate development. Areas not in a Facility Planning Area have individual wells and septic systems. Most areas in a Facility Planning Area get water and sewer service from the community, though that is not necessarily required. What these maps do is help provide a best guess on how these communities will grow their utility infrastructure.
On the map, there are three communities listed, Troy, West Milton and Union. Why is Union listed? Well, this once sleepy Montgomery County community is growing — and quickly. Development along the western edge of the Dayton International Airport, including companies like Crocs, Proctor and Gamble and Amazon are a part of Union and these business, while not large water users, are hooked up. In other words, if West Milton (and even the county) are looking for a new water supplier, Union might be an attractive option over Troy. One of the reasons Union might be attractive is that the water infrastructure is largely already there. Another attractive reason goes back to the Water Survey completed by the City of Piqua. The City of Union has a monthly water cost of $21 to the average household consumer, this is one-third what the average West Milton water user is using right now.
The Regionalization of Water
As smaller water facilities tend to go away and larger communities tend to grow, the number of water providers will probably shrink and water will end up becoming a public utility that is more and more regionalized. This is going to make communities think about the relationships they have with other communities in a different light. As the Jeff Sheridan, the West Milton Village Manager, spoke to the Commissioners at their work session, “We wish we were treated more like a partner rather than just another customer.”
Having large water regionalization in Miami County is probably never going to happen. That course was set when the City of Piqua, with a stagnant customer base, made the decision to go it alone and build their own water plant back in 2017 with a price tag of over $40 million. There were conversations between the Cities of Troy and Piqua ten years ago about sharing water resources, but it goes back to what Mr. Sheridan said above, were these conversations about creating partnerships or just the City of Troy having another water customer? The answer to that question, largely depends on who you ask.
And communities like West Milton that are quickly growing, are going to be in a prime position when it comes to thinking about water. On the face, Union seems to be a more attractive solution to public water over Troy; West Milton now has options, where in the past those options didn’t exist.
The next few years are certainly going to be very interesting as water infrastructure continues to be a highly necessary public utility as communities grow and thrive.
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One other thing to consider when a larger city water system is being used to supply other communities and bad decisions by city officials as happened in Piqua allowing a business to operate with possibility of contaminating the water supply affects could be devastating to thousands of citizens, businesses, and travelers using parks etc.
Just my observation of how important water is to life.
Chuck