Belleville resident John Tennant spoke Monday at a meeting of the Wood County Commission where West Virginia American Water, represented by Jake Glance, who is listening to Tennant speak, made a presentation about taking over water service from the public service districts in the county. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)

PARKERSBURG — The Wood County Commission will look at all of the options in determining if a private company should take over water and sewer service for the public service districts in the county.

Jake Glance, manager of business development for West Virginia American Water appeared before the commission on Monday at a meeting that also was attended by 20 people representing various public service districts and the public.

Glance outlined what WVAW can do in the area, including water and sewer systems repairs, maintenance and more.

The commission will be discussing a possible rate increase for the Lubeck Public Service District this Thursday with another request coming soon from Claywood Park PSD.

”Those weigh on us,” Commission President Blair Couch said.

The company has the means to handle doing upgrades if a sizable development wants to locate to an area through deals worked out with the company, Glance said

”One of the benefits to being a private company is that we are much more nimble in being able to respond to these requests a lot more quickly,” he said.

Since it is a publicly traded company and profit driven, WVAW cannot take advantage of grants or other taxpayer money to do system work. In many instances that can mean higher prices for water and sewer service, but the company will phase in the new prices over three to five years rather than do it all at once. The company also has programs in place to help lower-income residents.

He also talked about making significant investments to facilities in Cedar Groves, Charleston, Weston and looking to do improvements in Jefferson County and elsewhere.

”The money gets spent where it needs to be spent,” Glance said. ”Our customers are our customers, no matter where they are. If it needs to be done, it gets done and gets fixed.”

Its rates are set by the Public Service Commission, Glance said. Its rates are usually higher than what is available through the local PSD.

Some in attendance said WVAW rates are currently at $71.10 a month for 3,400 gallons of water, quoting the state’s PSC website. One person from Mineral Wells said they pay currently $36.11 for 3,400 gallons through the local system.

John Tennant of the Belleville area said he has been doing research into WVAW through the internet and what he has found online seems to indicate many people would see a significant increase in their water and sewer bills. He also pointed out customer service issues, outage problems, response time issues to problems and more.

Tennant said it could take three days for the company to respond to a problem. He talked about rate increases for certain areas where WVAW took over that ended up totaling 29 percent.

”I see some problems with the quality of the service and the expense,” Tennant said.

In response to a question about the PSD boards and leadership, Glance said some boards were dissolved and others continued on in public/private partnerships to be able to continue on with waterline extension projects that could qualify for certain funding.

People also talked about the characteristics of the county’s five public service districts, the geography of the area and other challenges.

“The key thing is you don’t lose the uniqueness and the support that is required of each of those specific areas as you go through this process,” said Rick Ollcott of Lubeck.

He urged the commissioners to be open minded and disciplined as they approach this.

WVAW would have to conduct site visits and do assessments of the facilities and to go over the perinate documents from the different PSDs and so on which also will take time.

The company would use that information to make a formal request, if its board decides to proceed with making an offer. Any offer can omit certain PSDs or include all of them. The county could make a counter offer and so on if they want to keep certain operations in place, like how customers pay their bills locally.

At any point WVAW or the commission can stop the process if it is not working out for either, Glance said in response to a question from Commission President Blair Couch.

Getting all the information together and formulating a proposal would take around 18 months to complete, Glance said adding it could take another seven to eight months to receive approval from the West Virginia Public Service Commission.

”This is a very long process,” he said.

Couch said since WVAW approached him, he was obligated to talk to them to see what they are proposing and to discuss it with the other commissioners.

”How far we get down this path, I don’t know,” he said.

The commission has suggested the local PSDs consolidate to help better control costs and cut redundancies, but many have been reluctant to do so, Couch said.

Commissioner Jimmy Colombo, when he served as mayor of Parkersburg, went through a similar process with WVAW when it proposed to to take over water service for the city.

Although the city ultimately decided not to go with WVAW, he said the process helped identify system problems that the Parkersburg Utility Board addressed and has since helped improve service overall.

”We are going to have to do something to make ourselves better for the future,” Colombo said.

Couch said another meeting is planned in the near future when the public can more easily attend.

”We can start this process and see where it leads us,” he said. ”It may not lead us anywhere.

”I have taken around 20 calls so there are a lot of people who do not want to see their water rate increase (which is being proposed by Lubeck PSD with another coming soon from Claywood Park). I get calls from people who don’t want want to be in the big mega-conglomerate, they don’t want a big faceless organization running their water.”

Couch said he was contacted by people in Vienna who asked why they aren’t being included in this process. Couch said WVAW may approach the other public service boards at some point to see if this is something they would be interested in.

He acknowledges a lot of the officials with the PSDs have a lot on the line with this. Local PSD officials are worried about the loss of local control over water and sewer systems.

Officials with Lubeck PSD said they have projects whose timing may depend if the proposed rate increase up for consideration goes forward or not.

Tennant believes more people from the local communities will attend those future meetings.

Another idea discussed was the Parkersburg Utility Board taking over the local PSDs to maintain local control.

Couch said waterline extensions are becoming difficult to do and sewer line extensions are becoming very expensive to do.

”We are down to where (extending water lines to) 90 people will cost over $6 million,” Couch said adding a question for WVAW will be how they will handle extensions.

Glance said public-private partnerships between the company and local officials will identify where the lines need to go, get the needed user agreements and apply for the eligible public money to do the lines. The company provides a contribution for the project, around $6,000 per customer, which covers some of the expense, but not all of it.

Couch said he wanted to reach out to other commissions around the state in areas where WVAW operates and get the local officials’ opinions about how the company does business and how the process of switching to WVAW went for them.

”I want to see the process from their eyes,” he said. ”We are going to have more meetings, there is no doubt about it.”

The documents Glance presented Monday were put on the county’s website as “Wood County PSD Presentation.”