PCWA water project bond sales coming this week
Polk County Water Authority officials are meeting again tonight at 6 p.m. to validate and lock in bond prices as they seek to gather funds for the forthcoming Mulco-Ammons Water Treatment plant. The county Water Authority (PCWA) board gathered and voted unanimously after hearing from attorneys on the plan to offer upward of $7.7 million for financing of construction and additional pipe installation to support the new plant to begin in April.
Attorneys Andrew Truett and Jim Woodward explained to the board the process they’ve gone through over the past months starting during the autumn months of 2017. What the board approved last week was a resolution to present the bonds via an offering document to the market and subsequent information for inspection, and get the sale underway next week.
The Water Authority continues to hold an A+ bond rating on the market, Truett said. He added that one of the comments provided by a third party evaluating the finances and system said that PCWA has “a track record of converting long term strategy into action in a manageable effort.”
“I think that is just affirmation to you all that you’re managing the system in a prudent way,” Truett said.
Once the bonds are sold, they will still have to undergo a validation process via the Tallapoosa circuit Superior Court before they are finalized. Additionally, the $7.7 million they’re seeking to collect from bond sales is more than what the at- torneys said the board should expect.
After the vote, board member Ken Woods did seek more information about what the PCWA is likely to get as an interest rate on the bonds for their payoff. He’s worried that recent volatility in the rates on the private bond market will cost PCWA more in the future.
“We’ve seen rates have moved higher all along the curve,” Woods said.
Truett said t hat he couldn’t say for certain what the rates were going to be, but that he predicted a rate somewhere around 3.5 percent on the notes.
“We hope to keep the rate down as much as we can,” Truett said.
The project prompting the bonds hopes to provide much improvement to the overall delivery and quality of water to Polk County residents.
Water Authority General Manager Jack Damron said the goal of the Mulco- Ammons Water Treatment plant is to benefit the entire system, but will be primarily focused on South and West Polk County. The modular plant designed by Ronnie Wood of R.J. Wood and Company — who is also the engineer for Polk County and other local entities — will be modular when constructed over the coming year of construction. It is designed to be able to treat 2 million gallons of water a day.
The plant is being installed due to higher turbidity which is occurring in both the Mulco and Ammon Springs locations.
“We believe the changes in turbidity are directly attributable to an underground event somewhere along the aquifer system that feeds each spring. Trying to identify the cause and repair it would only exacerbate the problem and make conditions worse. The plant has been part of the Authority’s Master Plan and this turbidity event has caused us to pull timing forward. Our commitment continues to be to deliver the safest and cleanest water to our customers, and this project directly supports that effort,” Damron said.
He added that “We will be utilizing state-of-theart SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) software and hardware to monitor and manage plant performance, which will help to assure the cleanest and most efficient operation possible. Hopefully, new businesses considering Polk County will see the investment as a part of our commitment to helping Polk grow for the future. This is a major improvement to our system that will provide clean water to the residents of Polk County for many decades to come.”, Damron said. “Our Board of Directors, staff and management team have turned in the work to make this a reality.”