Amador County – The Amador Water Agency board last week heard how a Community Facilities District could fund expansion of the Tanner Water Treatment Plant. The agency has discussed increasing storage and treatment capacity there, and Dennis McGuire, of Piper Jaffray gave a presentation on funding such Capital Improvement Projects using formation of a Community Facilities District. McGuire’s estimate used 10,000 total customers as it basis, which would require 2,600 new units “to participate in the Community Facilities District.” AWA General Manager Jim Abercrombie said the study was “based on the 2007 Amador Water System financial Plan,” and was made to see if a CFD could “eliminate the need to charge customers for the increase of treatment capacities.” Abercrombie said “we are not proposing on implementing this tomorrow, because of the economy;” but simply to show possibilities. Abercrombie said the study was to see if the agency could fully fund a new water treatment plant, with full use of participation fees, and “without cost to existing customers.” McGuire said the numbers were 2 years old, and the study was meant “to show how the program would work,” but not to give “deep details.” McGuire said the “actual number of participants could actually be much smaller than 2,600.” Abercrombie said if it turns out the numbers are low, the agency “can resize the project.” The study was geared strictly for the Treatment Plant expansion, but a CFD could also be used to fund a “water reclamation system.” McGuire’s presentation included using the “Transmission Line Fee” to pay for the treatment plant at Tanner, and Board Member Bill Condrashoff said he thought that was misusing funds that should go toward paying for the Amador Transmission Pipeline. AWA Chairman Terence Moore said “we are going to borrow from that money to build a Water Treatment Plant.” Abercrombie said the agency can use “internal transfers of bond proceeds” and “buy-in money for anything we want.” Condrashoff said the numbers showed “you are collecting $16 Million Dollars for a $21 Million Dollar plant.” McGuire said the cost of the presentation model “was to support 10,000 units,” and “it was oversized.” He said it used the total impact fee of $8,139 dollars, “up front,” to get the $21 Million Dollars. He said if there was no future development, it would not be paid. Moore said “the reason we came up with the Community Facilities District estimate was so developers would pay 100 percent of the water treatment plant. We wouldn’t ask current customers to pay for it.” Abercrombie said the concept of the design is to build to serve the needs, with an expandable design, like the Buckhorn Water Treatment Plant, which brings in skids of new filters to expand capacity. Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.