A public hearing was hosted during the Wednesday evening Price City Council meeting to discuss the water treatment plant upgrades project design phase.
Public Works Director Miles Nelson came prepared for the hearing with informational sheets to hand out that outlined the background of the project. It explained that Price City recently utilized two professional engineering firms to conduct studies of two components of the city’s water system. One study analyzed the potential need to replace the city’s aging and outdated Water Treatment Plant (WTP).
The other study analyzed the condition of Price City’s spring water transmission line and the two studies were jointly funded by the Permanent Community Impact Board (CIB), the Division of Drinking Water (DDW) and a local match from the city.
The spring water transmission line study results showed that the oldest sections of the line are currently leaking and are at risk of a more catastrophic failure within the next one to two years. On the other hand, the WTP study determined that a complete overhaul of the facility is necessary.
The facility is critical infrastructure and is the primary means in delivering a sufficient amount of clean, safe drinking water to all of the residents of Price City. In order to address the replacement of the aforementioned failing sections of the transmission line, that line will need to be taken offline for an extended period for the replacement. It was explained that the problem with removing the line is that it provides more than half of the city’s drinking water supply.
The solution that has been proposed to taking the spring water transmission pipe offline is to proceed with the WTP upgrade. The project cost has initially been estimated at over $42 million and Price City has made the decision to move forward with the design phase to obtain a more detailed estimate for the project before seeking construction funding.
The estimated cost of the design engineering phase is $4,269,000.00, which is approximately 10% of the construction cost. The city has applied for funding assistance with the design portion of the project from both the CIB and the DDW in the amount of $2 million each.
Though grant funding has been requested, it is likely that a significant portion of the potential funding could be in the form of interset bearing loans. Price City is also reviewing current water rates with assistance from Rural Water of Utah and will likely need to raise the rates in order to service the department payments on the loans.
It was stated that local resources are limited for funding the cost of the design and construction phases of the project. Securing the water supply for the city’s future is vital to efforts in growing local capacity and to become a more self-reliant community.
Following this explanation, there were brief clarifying questions from residents in attendance before the hearing was closed and the design phase was approved by the council.