Letter: Clarity on water districts’ costs

EDITOR,
The recent article “Lompico Water asks to borrow 30K to study merger” (Page 3, April 6) may be somewhat misleading. Instead of asking to borrow money, the Lompico board has signed an agreement, prepared by the San Lorenzo Water District, authorizing SLVWD to spend as much as $30,000 for soil studies at tank sites and inter-tie pipeline research. The Lompico board has agreed to repay those costs with or without a merger.
At the March 15 SLVWD board meeting, district Manager Jim Mueller asked their board to authorize expenditures of up to $30,000 for technical and engineering services relative to the proposed merger. At that meeting, a member of the Lompico board, who is opposed to the merger, stated that the Lompico district should pay for these items ourselves, because we need them regardless of a merger. He also said that the Lompico community did not want to merge, in spite of the Lompico board’s majority position and the recent survey of district customers which reflected an 87 percent majority of respondents in favor of pursuing a merger.
The SLVWD board then decided that the Lompico district would receive the most benefit from these expenditures. As a result, SLVWD produced the agreement that was approved by the Lompico board on April 4. The Lompico board acted quickly so that the signed agreement could be presented to SLVWD at its April 5 meeting, making it possible for that board to approve it at its April 19 meeting and proceed without further delay.
It is expected that spending these funds will reduce some major costs of the original 2010 merger proposal by consolidating the number of storage tanks that need to be replaced and greatly reducing the length of the inter-tie pipeline.
Pete Norton, Lompico