Reverse osmosis plant to expand

Bonita Springs Utilities customers will get more for their buck in the next five years as the company prepares to spend $128 million on building projects.

The projects include a reverse osmosis upgrade, utility relocations, some land acquisition and the replacement of one of the water plant tanks.

“This will help the customers ...,” said Fred Partin, the executive director of the utility.

Construction on the first of the major projects — expanding its reverse osmosis water treatment capacity — will begin next year.

“We will expand it from currently six million gallons per day and we will add three to four million gallons of capacity to that,” Partin said.

That $20 million expansion will take two years to complete and will respond to the growing area and increased water demands.
“That will cover the additional growth ... we anticipate in the foreseeable future,” Partin said.

Expanding the almost four- year-old reverse osmosis part of the water plant is necessary because it allows utility officials to provide water in times of severe drought or emergencies.

“This gives current customers a diversified water treatment plant,” he said of the plant that opened in 1971 off East Terry and used lime softening to treat water.

The Bonita Springs City Council agreed with Partin and voted 6-1 last week to allow utility officials to raise utility rates by 3. 4 percent.

The average bill will go up by $2.65 a month. The rate will increase Sept. 1.

“We are just adjusting to the economy ... ,” said Partin about the increase that was scheduled in the utility’s five-year plan for projects.

“This is just following to the time frame when we originally identified that it needed to be for.”

City Councilman Pat McCourt said the increase isn’t necessary because the utility shouldn’t charge existing customers for projects needed for growth.

He said the utility should use the existing $36 million surplus in its budget for projects or return it to existing customers.

“I understand that we have to give people raises and we need construction but I can’t justify the 60 percent increase over the last eight years,” said McCourt, who was the only council member to vote against the increase. “I’ve talked to a lot of people who are upset that we pay such high premiums.”

Utility officials want to provide the best service possible and feel it had to increase rates.

“I’d never say never,” said Partin when asked if rates would go up again.

The rates for current customers will be re-evaluated next year.

The exact locations of land the utility officials may acquire in the future, Partin said, aren’t determined yet.

“The area of land we might acquire is for right of way of wells and that’s just what we have to install in the coming years for our reverse osmosis plant,” Partin said. “We know that we need it and we will have to acquire the property, buy it, at some point.”