First Posted: 3/12/2015
LIMA — With fewer state resources coming down the pike, regionalizing water and sewer services may be the way to go.
That is the premise upon which a feasibility study by the Allen Water District and Allen County Commissioners will be based. Representatives from the water district and commissioners met Thursday to discuss the implementation of this yearlong study, which will involve such efforts as community surveys and evaluating current utility services.
“We have a county sanitary engineering, sewer and water district, and we have the city of Lima and all these other communities that have utilities,” Allen County sanitary engineer Steve Kayatin said. “What the district is requesting is that we do a fesibility study to examine getting rid of some of the redundancies and layers and consolidate, sharing technical expertise amongst the smaller communities and just be more of one unit.”
The water district received a $50,000 grant to conduct this study, which will decide whether it will be beneficial to amend the mission of the Allen Water District to include sewer services. This would give both communities and townships the opportunity to consolidate their utilities with the county, a concept endorsed by the state, according to Allen Water District general counsel Rex Huffman.
“The governor of the state of Ohio has recongnized that local funds have become scarce, and the ability to weather through that storm is sharing services,” he said. “In many ways, all the local political subdivisions are getting encouragement from the state level to try to share services.”
While Huffman touted the benefits of this kind of structure, he acknowledged there are also potential challenges.
“Some of the challenges are just the independence of the utilities that currently exist,” he said. “There’s pride and independence there. The other would be trying to determine how to operate this new district.”
Arguably one of the biggest benefits, however, would be economic development, according to Kayatin. One example is Eagle Railcar Services north of Cairo. Commissioners voted Thursday to approve a $60,000 contract to expand water and sewer services to the company to accomodate the company’s current expansion.
“We’re going to have participation from the Allen Water District and hopefully the City of Lima,” Kayatin said. “It’s a coming together of a number of entities to make this happen. This is one good reason why we should regionalize, instead of trying to juggle all these different entities when you’re funneling in federal or state money.”
