YOUNGSTOWN Trumbull official: Buy city water

Youngstown offered a rate for water nearly 20 percent less.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- The Trumbull County Sanitary Engineer recommends county commissioners stop buying water from Consumers Ohio Water Co., and buy it instead from the city of Youngstown.
If commissioners follow the recommendation, it would throw a wrench into Consumers Ohio's proposal to privatize part of the county's water system.
"It doesn't technically prohibit us, but I think the message is clear," said Walter Pishkur, president of the stockholder-owned company.
Treated water from a Consumers plant in Pennsylvania flows through county-owned waterlines in parts of Brookfield, Hubbard, Vienna, Liberty and Howland townships.
The sanitary engineer buys about $1.1 million a year in bulk water from Consumers, then sells it to individual customers.
Promoted plan
Over the last several months, the company has promoted a plan to take over running the county system in the townships mentioned. In return for control of county waterlines for a 20-year period, the company pledged to make $4 million available for new lines.
In a letter to commissioners Thursday, Thomas Holloway, the sanitary engineer, said he wants cheaper rates when the contract with Consumers expires by 2004.
Youngstown offered to provide water for a bulk rate nearly 20 percent less, Holloway said.
Savings would be passed along to the 3,300 customers in the four-township system.
The municipal water system is less likely to dramatically increase rates than Consumers, Holloway said. Rates would be set locally and would not have to be structured to provide a return for stockholders, he said in a 19-point argument for his position.
The big issue
"Rates are just a piece of the whole bill," said Pishkur. "The major issue is there are people in the townships that the county has not been able to give access to water."
Pishkur's promise of new investment resounded with township trustees and county residents frustrated by failing wells and undrinkable water.
The county's township trustee association and many individual trustees have voiced hope that commissioners will look at the Consumers Ohio promise to expand the system if it is allowed to take over.
The company's reluctance to finance new waterlines in Ashtabula County was among reasons commissioners sued to get that county's water system back. The dispute is being settled out of court, said Robert Boggs, an Ashtabula County commissioner.
Consumers Ohio operated the water system in the western part of Ashtabula County since 1959 under a similar arrangement to what is proposed in Trumbull County.
County commissioners decided to get rid of Consumers after the company sought a 35-percent rate increase in 1996, Boggs said.
"We just felt they weren't putting the money back in that they were taking out," he said.
siff@vindy.com