Amador County – The Amador Water Agency board of directors last week held the first of three workshops on an Agency-wide rate study and discussed why it separates the water systems from the agency’s wastewater systems.

It was hosted by consultant Bob Reed, who is currently studying the water systems’ rates and costs, with AWA Controller Marvin Davis. AWA General Manager Gene Mancebo said the “study is designed to ensure rate equality and transparency for all customers of the Agency’s several water systems.”

Reed presented the process his firm is using to analyze agency costs. Mancebo said “the goal is to bring all systems under a single basic rate structure and to develop a 5-year plan for rates beginning with the 2012-2013 fiscal year.”

The first step was to separate water systems from wastewater systems, because 80-85 percent of the agency’s costs are from water, Reed said. Board President Don Cooper said the study will look at fixed costs and variable costs, and if a system fails, it would have higher variable costs.

Director Gary Thomas said “there is a lot of preventative maintenance that is being put off now,” and “is that being looked at?” Reed said wastewater costs are not being looked at, and they believe the split of water and wastewater is reasonable, but at some point they may want to come back and look at the split.

Director Robert Manassero said members of different systems believe they are paying too much, and he also “did not remember any letter to the board saying they accepted the 10 percent rate increase” in Camanche.

Mancebo said the new study looks at all expenses and how they filter through all of the systems. The goal is to have a base rate for all systems that is equal, and to identify things that should be shared equally with all systems. He said this study has never been done system-wide before, and it was probably a majority of the costs that are common to all water systems. He said maintenance time will be studied and time spent at each system will be analyzed.

Reed said the problem is to go from having that information to having rates that reflect that. Reed said they know how they spend their time on different systems, but they can’t say how they will spend time in the future. He said with that, “we can look at the overall use of labor and realize that some of these ebbs and flows will occur,” and it would help in making the 5-year plan for rates.

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.