When Do We Start Paying Money For Nothing?

by Roger Allen

 

     During the December 19th Pooler City Council meeting, it was revealed that the city of Pooler had just paid the City of Savannah some $100,000 for its November 2005 water bill. Of that sum, $55,000 was paid for “Water Capital Recovery Costs”. In order to understand why Pooler paid Savannah that much money for something I didn’t understand, it seemed sensible to read the 1997 water agreement (and the 2000, 2001, & 2005 amendments) that Pooler & Savannah had signed. Seeing as that didn’t help,  I contacted Savannah City Manager Michael Brown and asked him to explain why we were paying Savannah all that money.

     He said that Pooler officials had wanted in 1997 to reserve one million gallons a day of treated Savannah River for drinking water to supplement the water they could withdraw from the Floridan Aquifer. They had to make a choice between paying for their share of improvements made by Savannah at their Industrial & Development Water Treatment Plant (I&D) up front in one lump sum or make another arrangements in order to pay for this water.

     That is why then-Mayor Carter in section #3 agreed that Pooler would pay Savannah $1415 for every new home (referred to in the agreement as an ERU, or Equivalent Residential Unit) being built “to allow Savannah to recover these “Water Capital Recovery Costs” it incurred to enable the delivery of water to (Pooler’s) water delivery point.” This cost was not for the actual water the citizens of Pooler drink. In section #4 Pooler agreed to pay the City of Savannah $1.27 per 1000 gallons (amended in 2000 to $1.30 per 1000 gallons) for all the water they actually used.

     In section #22, it was stated that Pooler would provide water from Savannah for its newly annexed areas (Little Neck Road; Jimmy DeLoach Parkway; and west of the SEDA Industrial Park). The agreement stated the charge applicable in such areas should initially be $1415 per home. After Pooler had paid to Savannah a WRC for 3500 ERU’s in the areas annexed after January 1, 1997, Pooler’s capital cost recovery payments would end.

In 2000, then-Mayor Carter reserved another 2 million gallons a day of water when the city was using only one-third of the already-reserved one million gallons a day capacity. He also extended the $1415 payments from the maximum of 3500 payments to an unlimited number of payments.  Asked if additional charges should be paid only after the first million gallons of capacity had been exceeded, and the second million gallons of water began to be used, Brown stated that none of these ideas were discussed. He suggested I ask Mayor Carter.

     State Representative Buddy Carter was asked why he would agree to remove the limit to the number of these WRC charges Pooler would have to pay Savannah, and reserve so much additional (and apparently unnecessary) water capacity. He said he was looking to the future. He told me to talk to Pooler City Manager Dennis Baxter. Dennis told me that Pooler was now blending 300,000 gallons of treated surface water with 1 million gallons of Floridan Aquifer groundwater. Furthermore, he told me that the ERU’s are paid by the developers as they get building permits, and not by Pooler homeowners or taxpayers in their monthly water bills.

     At the same time this was happening, Mayor Carter had offered to sell Bloomingdale 300,000 gallons of treated Savannah River water. Carter had also strenuously objected to a correction of the error in Bloomingdale’s water permit by the E.P.D. Is it coincidental that the 2000 revision of the water agreement promises to collect these same ERU’s (and then pay them to Savannah) for every Bloomingdale home that connects into the Bloomingdale (and then the Pooler) water system?

     Bottom line: Whatever else happens, Mayors Lamb and Tipton need to ensure that the cities of Pooler and Bloomingdale do not end up paying Savannah “money for nothing” in the water agreement Mayor Carter signed back in February of 2000.