East Bethel OKs water project

The East Bethel City Council has voted to proceed with most of a divisive municipal water project that has been on hold since early January, when the council suspended it for further study.

The entire project is back on except for a water treatment plant, which is on hold pending a final water analysis. Dropping the plant, meant to cleanse the water of iron and manganese, would mean saving $5 million, almost a third of the city's $15.4 million construction costs. Back on are two wells, a water tower and a piping system to serve current and future users along a swath of Hwy. 65 at Viking Boulevard.

The 4-1 council vote was the culmination of a special meeting Saturday morning, where about 100 people filled the City Hall chamber, another 40 more listened from the hall, and even more drove away after seeing the crowds.

The proposal to bring water and sewer to the four-square-mile swath has been in the works since 2004. It's intended as a tool to attract businesses while preserving most of East Bethel's rural feel. The city's water supply project is linked to a $30 million Metropolitan Council-driven wastewater treatment plant.

After the November elections, a lame-duck council -- faced with year-end deadlines on $2 million in federal rebates -- signed contracts and sold $18.8 million in bonds, despite the reluctance of the incoming council, for which the project had been a major campaign issue. According to estimates adopted by the old council, by the time payments are due in 2013, user fees would be sufficient to cover early costs.

The new majority suspended the project and hired Bob Schunicht, of the consulting firm Landform, to analyze the project and the underlying numbers, to make sure it remained economically viable.

Schunicht's report found the system to be feasible at even a fraction of the projected development, which already was half of the official Metropolitan Council estimate. The report said that the city stood to lose as much as $9 million if the council were to vote to stop the project altogether, and that most rural-growth centers do not incorporate water treatment into their systems until later stages, if at all.

"Every little bit helps," he said. "Now we need to sit down and form a group of people that can really market East Bethel and really bring business in. The three of us [the new majority] do not believe 'If you build it, they will come' ever works, so the next step is to bring the business into East Bethel so it pays."

Council Member Steve Voss, one of two holdovers from last year, said he feels the analysis validated what he and Bill Boyer, his colleague from the old council, said all along.

"They took a more conservative view of the system and showed it still worked," he said. "The cash flow was there, and the whole setup would be successful at a more worst-case scenario than we looked at."

He noted that discussions about whether to drop the water treatment plant have been on the table for a couple of weeks.

"Every community is a little bit different in terms of water quality they get, but also the value they place on having good water quality," he said, noting that the users likely will treat the water themselves.

Council Member Bob DeRoche was the sole no vote. He said he objects to a project that he said will enrich only a few in the city. And while others took solace from the Landform report, he saw numbers that still will burden taxpayers.

"My vote was what in my gut I really feel: After analyzing all the data, I don't see how it's going to work how they say it's going to work," he said. "I'm sticking to what I said all along."