OWASA’s Rates and Service Quality

A public, non-profit agencyproviding water, sewer and reclaimed water services to the Carrboro-Chapel Hill community.

Newsletter of the Orange Water and Sewer Authority | Summer 2013 | Volume 22, Number 3

CONTACT US

Orange Water and Sewer Authority400 Jones Ferry RoadCarrboro, NC 27510

Customer Service phone and e-mail:919.537.4343 customerservice@owasa.org

Office Hours: 8 AM to 5 PM, Monday-Friday

Emergencies and Main Office phone:919.968.4421www.owasa.org; info@owasa.org

For the second consecutive year, the OWASA Board has adopted a budget with no increase in monthly rates for water, sewer and reclaimed water services.

For a typical residential customer using 4,000 gallons per month, the monthly water and sewer bill will remain at $70.66.

The OWASA Board and staff are committed to providingexcellent service at the lowest possible cost. We will continue working to reduce our costs where we can withoutcompromising our water, sewer, and reclaimed water services, which are an essential part of our community’s quality of life, public health and safety, environmental quality and economy.

Our work to reduce costs in recent years has included:

• Reducing the workforce by 12% since 2004.

• Refinancing part of our bond debt in 2010 to save our customers about $2 million in interest expense over 17 years.

• Improving processes at the Mason Farm Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) in 2010 to reduce chemical costs by about $300,000 a year.

• Upgrading equipment at the WWTP (current project) to save about $125,000 in electrical costs annually.

Heather Payne recently joined the OWASA Board as an appointee of the Chapel Hill Town Council. Ms. Payne is an environmental attorney with the Center for Law, Environment, Adaptation and Resources at the UNC School of Law.• Getting a no-interest loan from the State for the above

WWTP project, to save $1.7 million in interest compared to typical bond debt.

OWASA’s rates are based on a cost-of-service principle; the amount charged for a service is based on what it costs to provide that service. Some of the factors that have an impact on the rates we charge include:

First, most of our costs are fixed. They remain basically the same no matter how much water is processed or how many customers we have. For example: • We must operate our water and wastewater treatment plants 24 hours a day, and the number of staff to operate the plants is the same whether we treat 5 million gallons per day or 10 million gallons per day. (continued on back)

Welcome Heather!

To read our annual report including the results of laboratory testing, how we treat drinking water, our water sources and related information, please go to www.owasa.org and click on the water quality report under What’s New. Our website has additional information about our drinking water under What We Do.

Our Annual Water Quality Report Card is Available Online

Español Este boletín informativo contiene información sobre los servicios de agua y alcantarillado de OWASA. Para obteneruna traducción, por favor llame al 919.537.4221 o mande un correo electrónico a: info@owasa.org. ¡Muchas gracias!

2012WaterQualityRe

portCard

2012 Water Quality Report

We are pleased to provide this report on the quality of

our drinking water in 2012. We are committed to supplying

excellent water for our community’s quality of life, health

and safety and economic vitality.

In 2012, we treated about 2.6 billion gallons of drinking

water, or 7.3 million gallons per day, in accord with Federal

standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and related

State standards.

Orange Water and Sewer Authority, 400 Jones Ferry Road, Carrboro, NC 27510

PRSRT STD

U.S. POSTAGE

PAID

PERMIT NO. 1

ZIP CODE 14304

When a water pipe cracks or breaks, our crew works to locate and repair the leak until we restore service. To help maintain the reliability of our service, we replace more than two miles of water lines in a typical year as part of our annual capital improvements program. We replace water lines at various locations based on evaluation of pipe age, condition, reliability records and potential community impact of failure.

OWASA’s Rates ...(continued from front)

• The cost of testing our drinking water quality is the same whether our customers use 5 or 10 million gallons per day. Most of the testing at our WWTP is also unrelated to the volume of wastewater treated there.

• The need to clean, maintain and repair our pipe systems does not vary with the amount of water flowing through the pipes.

• Water and sewer facilities normally deteriorate due to the passage of time rather than the volume of flow in pipes, etc. The significant costs of renewing or replacing pipes and other facilities to keep them reliable are not affected by daily water use volumes.

• Bond debt payments ($7.9 million in the coming year) do not change with water demand.

A second key factor in our rates is that we have invested more than $50 million at the WWTP in the last 10 years to meet higher standards for protecting water quality in Morgan Creek and Jordan Lake, to control odor, and to ensure adequate back-up power. Most of these costs were financed with bonds to spread out the costs over the life of the improvements.

Finally, our community has achieved remarkable success in conserving water: we are using 30% less water than in 2002 and demand has returned to the level last seen in the early 1990s. Conservation has reduced our revenue and led to rate increases in some years. However, conservation will continue to benefit all customers by delaying the need for multi-million dollar increases in the capacities of our system and making us better prepared for future droughts.

While we will continue to work to cut costs, our goal is to provide excellent service to the community.

• In 2011, OWASA became only the ninth water utility in the U.S. to receive the national award for Excellence in Water Treatment from the Partnership for Safe Water.

• In May 2013, we were one of the first utilities in the country to receive the Partnership for Safe Water’s Directors Award for successfully completing a comprehensive self-assessment of water distribution system operations, a significant achievement towards ensuring the delivery of safe, high-quality drinking water to the community.

• In the last year, the number of breaks in our water pipe system was well below the industry standard for high performing utilities.

• We continue to meet or do better than regulatory standards for our water and wastewater treatment, and the wastewater spills from our sewers total a fraction of one percent of the volume we collect and treat.

Comments or questions?We work diligently to provide the community high quality water and sewer services andexcellent customer service at the lowest possible cost but we are always looking for ways to improve. We welcome your feedback and invite your comments and questions. We invite youto contact us at info@owasa.org or 919.537.4267.