Water plan’s hefty price tag draws criticism

The conversation about how Albemarle County and Charlottesville will get drinking water for the next 50 years — and at what cost — has heated up since an engineering firm hiked a cost estimate by tens of millions of dollars.

Local officials recently said that a firm charged with constructing a dam at Ragged Mountain, as part of the local 50-year water supply plan, now estimates that the dam will cost more than $70 million, up from $37 million. However, activists say the water supply plan could cost far more than local officials are leading on.

“Basically, they’re trying to make this [$70 million] number look as small as possible. No question about that,” said Kevin Lynch, a member of the Citizens for a Sustainable Water Supply Plan and a former Charlottesville city councilor.

Members of the citizens group have criticized officials for what they’ve called an attempt to make the current water supply plan as appealing as possible, while dismissing the citizen group’s proposals for considering other options — each of which consist largely of dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.

Officials have maintained that dredging alone will not supply enough water for the community for 50 years.

Thomas L. Frederick Jr., executive director of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, recently said that about $13.5 million worth of dam projects that were included in the original cost estimate for the dam were not transferred to an “approximately $70 million” estimate put in a Sept. 22 news release.

The projects that were in the $37 million cost estimate, but not included in Gannett Flemings’ newest estimate — which was actually $71,999,000 — include: engineering design, a mitigation plan and expenses associated with an Interstate 64 embankment, said Frederick.

Not only was the cost estimate rounded down by nearly $2 million, Lynch said, comparing two figures that do not include the same projects is misleading.

“There’s been an attempt all along to mislead the public about the cost and the benefit,” Lynch said. “If the public ever knew the true cost, they’d never stand for it.”

Lynch, who voted for the water supply plan as councilor in 2006, said members of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority Board should resign. He said that he voted for the plan as a councilor because he was deceived about the costs.

Lynch said he now feels obligated to shed light on the high costs of the plan, and believes other options should be considered.

Frederick said that officials did not intend to present an “apples to apples comparison” when they revealed Gannett Fleming’s cost estimate at a news conference.

The news release, which said that Gannett Flemings’ new cost estimate for the dam is “approximately $70 million,” would have been more accurate if it had said the new estimate was “beyond $70 million,” Frederick said. He added that the wording oversight was not an attempt to mislead the public.

A report from Frederick to the RWSA Board of Directors, also released on Sept. 22, said that Gannett Fleming projected that the Ragged Mountain project cost “could increase beyond $70 million … which is significantly greater than earlier estimates.”

The RWSA board has not endorsed the new cost estimate from Gannett Fleming.

Gannett Fleming released the $72 million estimate after finding fractured and weathered rock at the site of the future dam. Local officials then sought a second study from Schnabel Engineering, which identified possible cost savings of nearly $13.5 million or more.

Gannett Fleming has been asked to stop work on its plans for the dam, and the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is bringing in an independent, outside panel to review the findings of both firms.

The panel will consist of at least three experts in dam design, costs and construction, officials said. However, the amount that panel members will be paid or how long it will take them to determine the best route forward has not been determined.

“We’re hoping early in 2009 we can come to the point of important decisions but if we get to a point where they want additional data and then it takes time to find a driller to go out in the field to collect the data, there’s still some uncertainty as to how long that would take,” Frederick said.

The water supply plan was previously estimated to cost a total of $142.8 million, including construction of the dam at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir to increase water storage from 464 million to 2.19 billion gallons.

To fill the reservoir to its new capacity, a pipeline from the South Fork Reservoir is also to be built, which accounts for another major portion of the project’s costs, an estimated $55.9 million.

Lynch and Betty Mooney, also a member of the citizens group, say they expect the public to continue to be hit with increased cost estimates.

Lynch said that the pipeline’s cost also needs to be re-evaluated. The estimate in 2006 was based on a scenario where parts of the pipeline are built along a right of way obtained by the Virginia Department of Transportation to build the Western Bypass, a project that is inactive.

“They still don’t know the cost of the pipeline. … I just think that’s outrageous,” Mooney said. “They’ve got to look at the pipeline first.”

Frederick said that he’s not surprised that some people are “trying to scrutinize these numbers and try to figure out, ‘OK, what is the exact cost?’ You’re not going to get that figure, because the design work hasn’t been done.”

Mooney said she isn’t convinced by Frederick’s statements.

“He’s been called on it and now he’s trying to cover up,” she said. “He wants people to think it’s less money than it really is.”

Frederick said of people who are implying that RWSA is trying to hide something, they have to realize, “It was never our intent in publishing the board report to try to come up with an apples to apples cost comparison to previous estimates because we have not accepted those estimates.”