116 Business View - February 2016
ing right now is a direct potable reuse project, where
we will reclaim the effluent from the wastewater treat-
ment facility and run that through an advanced treat-
ment process and put it right back into the drinking
water supply.” That project has an estimated cost of
about $136 million. “Couple that with a very aging in-
frastructure in our pipes – both water and wastewa-
ter – and we have somewhere in the neighborhood of
$200 million worth of need in infrastructure rehabilita-
tion,” he adds.
Riley admits that all of that work cannot be done and
paid for at one time, but hopes that at least $50 mil-
lion can be funded and spent over the next few years.
He applauds the community’s necessary embrace
of water conservation, but notes that along with that
commendable behavior comes a concomitant reduc-
tion in the department’s revenue and, thus, a need to
raise water rates to make up for the shortfall. “That’s a
lot of burden on our 100,000 population,” he laments,
“but we had to restructure our rates to meet that fu-
ture need. We just went through that process, so hope-
fully, we can fund those needs with our current rate
structure.”
Shane Kelton is the city’s Operations Director. His
Department oversees the city’s fleet of vehicles, the
maintenance of its lakes, its stormwater and drainage
INFRASTRUCTURE
