Park Ridge officials have been asked to decide by July 1 whether to join Niles and Morton Grove in pursuing and paying for a new water line from Evanston.
William Balling, a consultant working with Niles and Morton Grove, said Park Ridge could save between $74 million and $111 million over the next 40 years by working with those communities and Evanston as a partner or customer versus staying with Chicago’s water service.
“We really do need some direction from Park Ridge,” Balling told aldermen on April 13, “There needs to be a hard decision on who’s in and who’s out.”
That decision, Balling said, needs to be made by July 1 to keep the project moving toward the goal of having a new water line open and in service by 2019 or 2020.
Meeting as the City Council’s informal Committee of the Whole, aldermen agreed that city officials should continue talking to their counterparts in Niles, Morton Grove and Evanston.
“We want to make sure the numbers being used in their projections are good numbers and that the assumptions are correct,” City Manager Shawn Hamilton said on April 14. “From the city’s perspective, we want to continue to validate the numbers and assumptions. And at the end of the day our recommendation will be what’s best for the residents of Park Ridge.”
If Park Ridge joins Morton Grove and Niles as a full partner in a new water commission, the city would pay $47 million toward construction of a new water main from Evanston to Park Ridge (a cost estimated in 2014 to be $115 million) but would save $111 million over 40 years in water fees, Balling said.
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If Park Ridge opts to be a customer of that commission, capital costs would be factored in to a “customer rate” estimated at $3.34 per 1,000 gallons – a rate that would still save Park Ridge about $74 million over 40 years versus Chicago, Balling added.
This year, Chicago’s water rate will be $3.81 per 1,000 gallons – an increase of 186 percent since 2005 – and will keep rising over time, he said.
Starting May 1, Park Ridge residents will pay $3.86 per 1,000 gallons in the “Chicago water” portion of the water rate – up from the current $3.49.
Park Ridge officials said Chicago has raised the city’s wholesale water costs 200 percent since 2005.
Park Ridge began looking to Evanston as a potential source of cheaper water in March 2012, when aldermen agreed to chip in $30,000 toward a regional feasibility study that ultimately estimated the costs of laying new water mains from Evanston to the Northwest suburbs at $200 million to $430 million.
The study languished after its release, but in 2013, Niles asked the engineering firm Gewalt Hamilton for an update, which revived the notion that Niles, Morton Grove and Park Ridge would be a good fit for potential new Evanston water service.
Morton Grove’s contract for Chicago water service expires at the end of 2018, Niles’ at the end of 2019. The goal is to have Evanston water service online by those dates, Balling said.
Balling, the former village manager of Buffalo Grove, was chair of the Northwest Water Commission during the 1980s when that group – a consortium of Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Palatine and Wheeling – tapped into Evanston’s water service.
In December, the Commission agreed to begin selling water to Des Plaines in 2016.
Jon Davis is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.