CU plans to sell water to local communities

by Karen E. Culp

SBJ Staff

City Utilities is primed to become the region's water supplier.

Already providing water to more than 70,000 customers in the immediate Springfield area, the utility is ready, and able, to provide neighboring communities with water, said Gerald Lee, executive senior manager for gas, water and technical services at CU.

Having a significant base of surface water from which to draw puts City Utilities in a good position for becoming a water supplier for the greater Springfield region, if the neighboring communities have an interest, Lee said.

"It wasn't necessarily any specific strategy on our part, but in building the Stockton water pipeline, we opened up the possibility for becoming the regional water supplier for the area," Lee said.

The Stockton project came online in 1996. It is a 31-mile line that leads to the Stockton Lake, a large supply of surface water for CU, Lee said. CU's water supply is almost entirely surface water, though there are a few wells the system uses. In addition to Stockton Lake, Fellows and McDaniel Lakes, and Fullbright Spring, supply the city with its surface water, Lee said.

Communities surrounding Springfield have talked with CU, on and off, for some time about water supply. Officials in Nixa have talked to CU a number of times about the concerns that city faces as its population grows. Nixa's water comes from a set of wells, but in the years to come, the city may have to turn to other sources of water.

"At this point, we have to wait and watch what happens with the aquifers. It could be that we would create more wells, or we could look to an arrangement with CU," said Mike MacPherson, Nixa city administrator.

Other communities, including Ozark, Battlefield, Rogersville and Willard, have approached CU with requests to consider them potential customers for its system, Lee said.

"If we added a neighboring community onto our system, it would be, to some degree, like adding a large industrial customer onto our load," Lee said.

City Utilities completed the water line to Stockton Lake with the hope that the line would supply water for Springfield until 2040. So far, the Stockton supply is used only as excess capacity, when the utility's water supply from Fellows and McDaniel lakes isn't sufficient to meet its needs, Lee said. Having the abundance of surface water available, and its two treatment plants, both of which are capable of expanding to meet more capacity, strengthens CU's position as a potential regional supplier of water.

Lee said several factors would contribute to a community's turning to CU for its water needs. Primary among those concerns is that of additional regulatory requirements that have come about in the past few years and will continue to increase, Lee said.

"Municipalities are constantly having to comply with new regulations placed on them by environmental agencies. In many cases, they are having to add chlorination, or look at treatment facilities of some sort," Lee said.

Most of Springfield's neighboring communities draw their water supply from wells, which can lead to contamination problems easily, Lee added.

"The risk is always there because the groundwater can get contaminated fairly easily," he said.

Both MacPherson and Lee pointed to the limitations of drilling wells.

"There are only so many times you can drill. You have to see what the aquifer will allow," Lee said.

CU can handle the growth that would come with selling wholesale, treated water to smaller towns, Lee said, but it would have to plan for transporting the water.

"If one of the communities did get serious about our providing them with water, we would have to look at getting it to them. It would be the same consideration we would give to any new, large customer," Lee said.

One of the utility's treatment facilities, its Blackman plant, is already expanding to accommodate Springfield's growth, but it has the capacity for yet more expansion, Lee said.

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