(Orleans)– The Orleans City Council Monday evening again discussed where to go from here regarding its water distribution system and where the water for that system will come from in the future. City Attorney Don Hemphill again outlined how the city got to this point…
“Spirit Lake has provided Orleans’ water under an agreement for about 80 years. The current agreement was a 20 year agreement that ends next June 30th and as you’ve heard the city of Spirit Lake has said we don’t want to continue that sort of arrangement, we don’t want any responsibility for the distribution system here in Orleans. Iowa law and the regulations of the Department of Natural Resources require that somebody be responsible for each public water system and that responsibility involves testing and monitoring and operations, so that brings us to where we discussed tonight. We’ve got to make a significant change.”
The council Monday evening directed a representative with an engineering firm, Bolten and Menk, to come up with a proposal for services. Hemphill says that will address pros and cons of two possible options…
“One is to accept bulk water from Spirit Lake and establish our own distribution system and the other is to turn the system over to Iowa Lakes Regional Water which is willing to operate it. Either way is going to involve significantly increased costs and I think the principal thing the engineers hopefully will address is project those costs over the next five years and compare them.”
The council set 5:00 pm Monday, October 17th as the date for a special meeting to discuss the matter further.
