Re: [Mpls] Is water now golden?

[Bob GUSTAFSON]

Zack Metoyer asked:   "I may be just sounding off, but can anyone tell me where to get the numbers on the water department? It would be nice to understand why we are receiving such large bills. Mine is around $97 per month for water and sewer. No, my toilet does not run. No, I do not have a leak." I'm always impressed with the marketing savvy of those who have convinced so many to feel compelled to purchase their drinking water in a bottle. We go into a mental and economic depression when gas prices go from $1.01 per gallon two weeks ago to $1.39 today. I would hate to compute what the bottled water we drink costs per gallon. I personally suspect that gas is a loss leader to get us into the station to buy coffee and bottled water. That's got to be where they make their money.     Have you ever wondered where our water comes from? Think Mississippi. I'm not sure you should eat fish caught in the river, let alone drink the water. That however is the task we have given our water department. Now think Giardia and Cryptosporidium, which you don't have to understand, you just have to accept they are not good for you. When several people died in Milwaukee a few years back and the problem was traced to  city water the wakeup call went out to all cities to freshen up the water. The capital costs to Minneapolis for the ultra filtration needed to provide clean and safe water is currently budgeted for $113 million over the next four years. Add the need for water main replacing, cleaning and relining and you can add $29 million. Realize that there are parts of our water system that are over 100 years old. The total spent to rebuild and improve this system for the years 2002 to 2006, just capital projects, is $171,880,000. That does not pay one cent to run the system. That just maintains and provides the system.   When this work is all complete and our water is minty fresh maybe we can start selling city water at the Lake Harriet concession stand and pick up a little subsidy for the Park Board. If they can't make money selling water they truly need a management change.   Of course once our citizenship drinks that water it eventually runs though their system and they deposit it back into our city system, as in the sewer. and we need to deal with it again. For some reason the Feds won't let us deposit the water back in the Mississippi in the condition we took it out. They think we should clean it up first. Add to that the fact they we are still paying to properly separate our storm sewers from our sanitary sewers and you have some significant capital improvements. We all want a clean river, but it doesn't come cheap. We all want clean lakes for that matter and that means improvements to the storm sewer system to control flow into our lakes. Some people in Minneapolis also appear to have no sense of humor about Minneapolis being the city of Lakes, especially when heavy rains hit and the lake is in their basement. Flood control areas are a part of the sewer fund as well.   The total capital cost budgeted for 2002 to 2006 for all sewer work combined is $59,555,000.   The total rate change estimated for your combined water and sewer rate, in $/100 Cubic Feet, started at $3.70 in 1997 and increases to $6.47 in 2006. That increase assumes an annual 3% increase in operating and the balance of the increase to pay for the capital costs.   I'm not sure how that works out in cost per average glass of water we drink, but I suspect we have a ways to go before we reach bottled water prices.   Bob Gustafson 13th