City water rates could jump 20%
Cost of repairing dam at Cooper Lake has skyrocketed from original estimate
The cost of repairing the dam at the city’s Cooper Lake reservoir has risen 140 percent from the initial estimate, and water users’ rates could rise as much as 20 percent as a result, according to the Kingston water superintendent.
Judith Hansen said the project, for which design plans are nearing completion, now is expected to cost $12 million. The cost was estimated at $5 million when the dam repair first was considered in 2014.
Cooper Lake, in the Woodstock hamlet of Lake Hill, is the main water supply for the city of Kingston. The lake is fed by the Mink Hollow Creek.
Hansen said the Water Department is likely to ask the Kingston Common council to authorize borrowing for the dam work. The department has its own board of commissioners, but council approval is required for the department to borrow money.
Hansen said grants will be sought to offset the cost of the dam repair. She said the Board of Water Commissioners “is looking at any and all funding opportunities, and they are hoping at least a portion of [the work] could receive some grant funding.”
“They are looking at all avenues to minimize the cost on the rate payers,” Hansen said. “However, if we are unsuccessful and need to obtain a loan for the entire amount, we are looking at a possible 20 percent rate increase.”
Of the dam repair cost skyrocketing from the original estimate, Hansen said: “When the earlier estimate was done, very little detailed design work had been completed, and it (the predicted cost) was based on the conceptual
design. We are now deep into the design, and ... we have taken a more detailed look at the existing structure and what would be required to bring it up to current design standards and codes.
“This is the biggest factor, since we now know exactly what we are building and how that needs to happen,” she said.
Also, Hansen said, the first estimate “was done about five years ago, and all costs have escalated somewhat.”
Additionally, the original estimate was “for construction only and did not include engineering services,” she said, “nor did it include any electrical for the valves and new intake structure.”
Those elements alone added about $2.5 million to the project’s cost, Hansen said.
She said the new estimate also includes 10 percent for “contingencies.”
The project design is about 90 percent complete, the superintendent said.
“We anticipate that the design will be finalized by the end of 2019 and that the project will go out to bid in early 2020 with construction in 2020 and 2021,” she said.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation issued dam safety regulations in 2009 that require owners to make detailed engineering evaluations and bring their dams into compliance with current engineering standards.
While the Cooper Lake dam was found to be safe, the state said it needed improvements to comply with the new safety standards, Hansen said previously.
The $12 million estimate for the dam repair comes about five years after the company Niagara Bottling withdrew its plan to build a plant in the town of Ulster
that would have drawn water from Cooper Lake. Niagara would have paid Kingston for the water it used, and supporters of the plan noted the income would have helped pay for repairs to the city water system’s infrastructure.
Niagara pulled out amid public opposition to the plan. Hansen said at the time that she was “disappointed” by the company’s decision “because I certainly believe we had water and that this would be a good way” to minimize rate hikes.
Opponents of the Niagara Bottling plan said the city could not afford to give up the amount of water the company wanted and that a public commodity should not be sold to a company seeking to profit from it. They also raised the issue of plastic waste resulting from the sale of bottled water and opposed Niagara’s plan to discharge wastewater into the Esopus Creek in Ulster.