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BEACON PHOTO/ROB FIELD
New hydrant — Deltona Water workers, from left, Sidney Santiago, Tyler Shinner (in backhoe) and Jose Corsino install a fire hydrant at the intersection of Lehigh and Kingsway drives on Nov. 26. Utility Manager Jeff Elder was also on the job.
PHOTO COURTESY CITY OF DELTONA
Big system — Shown is Deltona Water’s sole wastewater-treatment plant, at 401 Fisher Drive. Another sewage-treatment plant is planned east of State Road 415.
Former City Commission candidate talks about water, sewage
By Rob Field
posted Dec 6, 2012 - 11:21:22am
Editor’s note: The following analysis was written for The Beacon by Deltona City Commission candidate Rob Field, who lost his race for the District 2 seat to Webster Barnaby in the Nov. 6 election. During the campaign, Field studied Deltona’s water-and-sewage situation in depth, and wanted to share what he learned with residents of Deltona.
The cost of water and sewage service were important issues in this year’s Deltona City Commission elections. There is a great deal of public anger about years of annual water-rate increases of more than 17 percent, and some customers, particularly Deltona’s 6,000 sewage customers, face significant financial hardships for reasons not of their making.
While discontent with high sewage rates and rapid water-rate increases is widespread, few Deltonans know how the city got in this position. Water rates for city customers were frozen for 13 years, damaging water quality and safety, and threatening the economic future of Deltona.
During the Wall Street crash that precipitated the Great Recession, the Deltona City Commission was told by outside consultants that to meet the requirements of our bond covenant and permit expansion of our wastewater system, five years of 17.25-percent increases in the water rate were needed.
After three years of the programmed rate hikes, Deltona’s water rates are still lower than the state average and lower than customers on the north side of Deltona pay Deltona North, the county-owned utility that serves that area.
The increases provided funds for repair and replacement of pipes and infrastructure, which are almost 50 years old in some places, and placed the city on track to building a needed wastewater-treatment plant in the development corridor along State Route 415. The Deltona City Commission has now frozen the rates, threatening these goals.
Some water-only customers do pay bills of hundreds of dollars a month, but mostly because the city, meeting a requirement from the St. Johns River Water Management District, must charge customers who consume more than 18,000 gallons per month almost six times as much as those who use less than 6,000 gallons. The residents with these high water bills are almost all trying to grow St. Augustine grass or other plants not adapted to Deltona’s climate and soil. Some customers use 35,000 gallons of treated drinking water a month on their lawns, and complain loudly about their exorbitant bills.
Hardest hit have been Deltona’s sewage customers, approximately 6,000 accounts, who pay more than county customers of Deltona North. Although sewage-metering is capped at 6,000 gallons per month, the average Deltona sewage customer pays more than his or her neighbor who is served by Deltona North.
A high base charge and a high metered rate for sewage combine to cause great hardship among those on fixed or modest incomes, who are routinely saddled with combined water-and-sewage bills of more than $100.
The Deltona City Commission’s recent decision to reduce the base charge by $25 per month may help those living alone, but rates for larger users are still too high.
The reason for their hardship is that 6,000 customers must pay for the maintenance of a citywide infrastructure. The only sustainable way to reduce their bills is to put more customers on the system.
Because our current wastewater plant is running at 86-percent capacity, that means one of two things: The city must buy the county’s Deltona North system, which is operating at half capacity; or the city must build a wastewater-treatment plant on the S.R. 415 corridor.
It is at the county’s discretion to sell Deltona North, and county officials have been inconsistent about their intentions, sometimes declaring it off the table, sometimes hinting they would sell for three years’ revenue, sometimes for less.
The advantage of a purchase is that it would come with customers already hooked up and may permit immediate rate reductions for Deltona sewage customers, as well as water-rate cuts for those on Deltona North water. A purchase would, however, leave Deltona with less excess capacity than construction of the new plant on S.R. 415. That would limit the city’s ability to attract a large new employer, such as a hospital.
Building the new plant would also solve the capacity issue, and address the extreme age of many residential septic systems, but might impose hookup costs on the city or septic customers.
The only fair way to finance that expansion is through a bond issue, so future generations who benefit from the sewage system would help defray the costs. A bond issue, however, may be impossible given the current anti-government political environment.
Rate increases to finance sewage hookups would be equally unpopular. That may leave the Deltona North option as the only feasible next step that would address the costs to existing sewage customers, and that depends on the county’s willingness to cooperate.
The Deltona City Commission’s recent moves to cut, and, later, to freeze, water rates endangers both of these options. Staff and commissioners talk past each other, with many commissioners consistently disbelieving professional staffers and outside consultants.
There being no civil or hydrological engineers on the Deltona City Commission, the basis of this disbelief remains unclear.
This issue alone has the potential to endanger the future of Deltona. One hopes that a more sustainable consensus can be found.
Reader Comments
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I keep hearing about things being kept secret, but I can read them in the reports and PowerPoints that any citizen can get from City Hall. I know everyone has jobs, families, and responsibilities, but if those obligations keep you from researching the complex issues of governing the County's largest city, that doesn't count as a conspiracy.
Pro tip: before you attend your next City Commission meeting, go to the Commission page on the City website and download the agenda. It will have all supplementary documentation included, unlike the paper version they give out in the Chambers.
Here comes the kicker that no one has mentioned, how much will it cost EACH homeowner in Deltona to get off septic and convert to city water?
How are the residents forced to do this?
Mr. Field, if you areare so knowledgeable about this issue, then maybe the Deltona City Commission should have hired you to do another study instead of spending $35,000 from the same company that originally came up with the 85% increase proposal!
A couple of reasons come to mind. My margin of defeat was the lowest of any Commission race this cycle. I received more votes than for any Commission District in a prior cycle, despite being outspent more than two-to-one, thanks to my opponent's out-of-town business money. I was the grassroots candidate, not my opponent. That grassroots work led me to understand the City's problems from the City's perspective, as well as that of business owners and ordinary citizens.
Unlike my opponent, I ran an issues-centered campaign, avoiding cheap pandering. That gave me the opportunity to learn the details of City government in a way that few candidates here have ever done. I spent a great deal of time researching the issues from multiple perspectives. Information wants to be used, Ms. White. That's why I'm sharing it with you here, not any ambition on my part. I assure you that if I were motivated by ambition, I would not have run for City Commission. Commission is about service, not power or career.
Further, no one named Mary White is a registered voter in Deltona, so Ms. White either does not care enough about City government to vote, doesn't live here, or doesn't exist.
The tiered pricing is working. Conservation is the killer app for addressing our water problems. It takes strain off the infrastructure and reduces maintenance costs. We have a family of three, including a teenager who takes two showers a day. We have several pets, and go through laundry and dishes like mad. We paid $21.58 last month.
How could a former utility freeze rates for 13 yrs and stay in the black? Look at the population growth charts of VC/Deltona for the past 25 yrs. No need to raise rates when you're getting 30-60 new hookups / month. Deltona used to be a boomtown, times they are a changin. Ask King John M if his ego was more important than common sense. He stampeeded the citizens onto their current path and all are experiencing the pain of incorperation.
Are the sewer lines metered in the COD? I believe incoming water is. Does all of your water use enter the sewer system? I am on septic and upwards of 50% of my incoming water does not exit thru the waste line into the tank and drainfield.
Would like to see a graph of usage per capita over the past 10 yrs to see usage trend vs economy. Is water an elastic commodity?
The first mistake was the city buying the water company and then agreeing not to raise rates for five yeaars. A mistake not made by the ciitzens of Delton but by the city commission. It now has come back to haunt the taxpayers. He suggests many expensive options. Buying Deltona Water, a new treatment plant on 415, hooking all septic tank owner homes up to sewers. He sounds as if he has all the answers but never says what the cost to taxpayers would be for these ideas. He must think the income for the average Deltona resident is like those that live in Palm Beach or Heathrow.
He then goes onto hint at the ineptness of the commissioners and that FT positions are necessary. He must be available of FT work.
What would that cost?
Field needs to pass his ideas and suggestions onto the elected officials of Deltona, something he is not. Get over it Rob Field you lost so stop trying to make those that were look ingnorant and uninformed.
Your ad hominem comments mean nothing to me. You're wasting your breath. How am I supposed to feel insulted by someone who lacks the courage to speak with their own name?
The water rate hikes were extreme, but only because the thirteen year rate freeze was ridiculous and unsustainable. I have an inbox full of complaints about water quality and safety, especially in the older sections of the City where Repair and Replacement ops are most critical.
In addition, I read the consultant's report given in 2008, and I can tell you it's not confusing at all. If anything, this misunderstanding is an indictment of the City's reliance on part-time representatives, as well as a bedroom community's surfeit of part-time citizens. If we fail to address these problems, we will continue to be poorly governed.
At the meetings that the rate increases were discussed, it was told to the people that the increases were 17.5 over 5 years. What no one said explicitly was that the increases were 17.5% A YEAR for 5 years. They played upon an electorate that does not understand compounding increases. That seemingly harmless 17.5% increase over 5 years suddenly becomes a 124% increase, a $50 bill becoming a $111.98 bill. When I talked to several on the commission, they told me I was crazy. Hmmm, seems I was right.
Second, Mr. Field gives two options in the article for dealing with the wastewater treatment problem (and I quote): "The city must buy the county’s Deltona North system, which is operating at half capacity; or the city must build a wastewater-treatment plant on the S.R. 415 corridor."
No Mr. Field, the city has another option - GET OUT OF THE WATER BUSINESS!! Government does not belong in business, PERIOD!
Also, your statement of "Deltona’s water rates are still lower than the state average" makes you sound like that ignorant commissioner Herzberg. If you wish to pay higher rates like the rest of Florida, MOVE. I prefer lower rates, especially when the money is going to the government. I will be looking forward to seeing the For Sale sign on your home soon.
It is good that you lost Mr. Field, I don't think Deltona could have survived another ignorant politician serving our community.
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