Wilmette and Kenilworth have agreed to a 34-year contract that will allow Kenilworth to buy its water from Wilmette, rather than produce its own supply at the 87-year-old Kenilworth water treatment plant at 1 Kenilworth Ave.
Kenilworth trustees approved the agreement on Feb. 22, and Wilmette’s board did the same at its Feb. 23 meeting.
If all goes well, Kenilworth’s roughly 800 households and its commercial and other non-residential users could be consuming water treated at and delivered from Wilmette’s Lake Avenue water treatment plant in November, according to Kenilworth Village Manager Patrick Brennan.
The contract – under which Kenilworth will pay $1.78 per 1,000 gallons of water for an annual average of $264,000, and which will run through Dec. 31, 2050 – frees Kenilworth from operating a plant that has grown increasingly difficult to maintain, village officials said.
“We’re pleased to have reached this conclusion,” Kenilworth Village President Bill Russell said. “I think it will be very good in the long run, to control costs. In this day and age, a water plant of Kenilworth’s size is inherently inefficient.”
The contract should provide Wilmette with between $150,000-$200,000 annually in new water revenue, Assistant Village Manager Michael Braiman said Feb. 23 after his board’s vote.
Braiman thanked fellow administrators for completing what he called an “incredibly complex” research and negotiation process, and praised Kenilworth officials “for having the trust in us to deliver safe water to customers.”
The road to the agreement was long and occasionally convoluted. In 2014, Wilmette and Kenilworth split the costs of a design study of a potential remote pumping station that could route water from Wilmette to Kenilworth. Kenilworth also did a cost analysis on decommissioning its own plant.
At the time, consultants told Kenilworth that it would pay about $7.18 per each 1,000 gallons of water it sold to customers to continue to use the aging plant, which had its last partial upgrade in 2004. Those costs included paying a plant engineer and bringing the facility up to proper standards. That price would rise to $12.55 per 1,000 gallons by 2039, consultants said.
In contrast, shuttering the plant and switching to Wilmette’s system could cost the village as little as $6.31 per 1,000 gallons in direct and connected operational costs in 2014, rising to about $8.57 per 1,000 gallons, according to the study.
In September 2014, Kenilworth’s board directed Brennan to start final negotiations with Wilmette. At the time, Wilmette Village Manager Tim Frenzer and Brennan said the two communities could reach an agreement before the end of the year.
However, negotiations stretched into 2015 and that March, Brennan and Russell told Kenilworth trustees that the village was also talking with Winnetka about a possible agreement.
In April 2015, Wilmette sent the project out to bid and received a low bid price of $2.36 million construction cost from Cary-based Bolder Contractors. After Kenilworth officials decided to choose Wilmette, Kenilworth won an agreement from the contractor that it would maintain the cost it offered in 2015, according to Brennan. Kenilworth trustees officially awarded the bid to Bolder on Feb. 22, the same night they approved the contract.
Of that amount, $1.63 million will be to build a booster pump station to improve water pressure and distribution west of Green Bay Road, under the intersection of Glendenning Road, Ashland Lane, and Kenilworth Avenue. That amount will also pay for work on water mains that will connect to the booster station, Brennan said. The cost is funded by money from a $9.75 million bond issue that Kenilworth sold in 2013.
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The remaining $732,218 of the project will pay for other general water system improvements needed before Kenilworth can switch water sources, including increasing water pressure to west Kenilworth fire hydrants, Brennan said. Roughly $500,000 of that will come from Kenilworth’s capital project fund and the rest will come from its general fund.
“This is being done exactly as the board has been wanting to do it, saying let’s save the money and pay for it when it needs to happen,” Brennan said.
Wilmette will have smaller start-up costs, Braiman reported to Wilmette trustees in a Feb. 23 memo: $32,000 to improve the computerized system at its water plant to handle the new distribution, and up to $75,000 in construction engineering costs.
Brennan said that Kenilworth trustees decided to choose Wilmette as a provider rather than Winnetka because its larger production capabilities could lead to lower costs for customers.
Wilmette already sells to Glenview, and the Kenilworth contract mirrors the rates Glenview pays.
Russell said no decision has been made on what to do with Kenilworth’s old plant, which sits on the lakefront at the top of a village-operated small public beach. Beachgoers already make use of showers and a patio located inside and next to the plant.
After the operation is shut down, the four village employees that currently divide their time between plant maintenance and other public works duties will largely be switched to those other duties, Brennan said. Final staffing decisions aren’t complete, he said.
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