Tampa Bay Water interlocal agreement and exclusivity changes
What the county recorded
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The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Oct 17, 2017
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The county’s minutes for Board of County Commissioners, Oct 17, 2017
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What was said
Machine transcription of 13m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 100% of 72 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Very good. Mike Carbala, Utilities Engineering Director. The purpose of this presentation is just to inform you on some of the proposed changes that the City of Tampa has made to our interlocal agreement that we have with Tampa Bay Water. Essentially, exclusivity is a key clause. Tampa Bay Water is the sole Provider of drinking water to the region. This first change would exempt reclaim water from that exclusivity clause. Therefore, member governments could develop reclaimed water into a source of supply if they wanted. There are some exceptions
already included within that agreement. One allows the city of Tampa to make some withdrawals from the Hillsborough River and run its existing water plant. So consequently, a follow-on change would be to increase. Some of the city of Tampa's withdrawals. They have a program called TAP, which essentially is where they take reclaim water, pump it into the ground, and then that would increase reservoir water levels so they could withdraw more water. The uh the uh remainder of that water as part of that agreement uh change would also allow
excess water to be sold, used by Tampa Bay Water uh to uh offset additional supplies. The impact of these changes, basically, as I mentioned before, we would be free to develop reclaimed water as a source of supply. It's interesting to note that Hillsborough County also has a pilot program. It's referred to as Sharp, down in the south-central growth area of their county where they are pumping reclaimed water into the ground. And presumably, originally that was to be a sailing
barrier. In other words, salt water intrusion. from overpumping and that would create a barrier to to stop that. But they're also looking at pulling that water out as well. It's a high growth area for them. There could be some near-term capital savings if Tampa or Hillsboro County were to develop some sources that could offset the need for Tampa Bay Water to make additional investments in growth. However, we believe that there also could be some potential consequences from a
financial perspective, especially the Tampa Bay Water's bond ratings, as well as the whole system in and of itself and how it was.
Our recommendations on this issue um Again, we because of this loosening of exclusivity, we're going to need to continue discussions with our fellow member governments. The Tampa Bay Water Board voted yesterday to allow Tampa Bay Water and the member governments to form a committee to discuss what these changes might look like. Those uh that committee is supposed to report back to Tampa Bay Waters Board in June of 2018 with bimonthly updates. Um
financial implications obviously are are are critical in this and they need to be fully vetted. Um there was some critical assumptions that were made in Tampa's rate consultant analysis. There was some rate consultant analysis the Tampa Bay Water did, questioning a lot of the assumptions that were made in some of those financial analyses. And we need to look at it from PASCO's perspective and what's right for our citizens moving forward. It's not on here, but of course I I believe we also need to engage our legislative
partners. If you've read in the news there has been some movement at the state level uh to possibly pass legislation that would allow municipalities or governments to use reclaimed water for their own purposes. So that's something we've engaged Ralph Lair on that and something that we would watch very closely. With that, I know that uh Commissioner Mariano had passed out some things. It's a really interesting uh illustration of the amount of debt that Tampa Bay Water currently has or
that we collectively have. Think of it as we bought a big house for everybody. If you want to move out of the house, well maybe we shouldn't have bought a house that big to begin with.
Yeah, one more? Yeah, you I wanna put it on the screen too.
Oh yeah, there you go. Oh okay. It's two sided two.
Let it know it's two sided.
That's really all I have formally. Essentially, we're going to participate right now in the in those meetings and keep the board apprised of of those activities and where they're heading. But Commissioner, I don't know if you wanted to talk through some of these numbers real quick or
if I could.
Go to the front with the slope of the graph, and it shows the total principal as of year 13 uh 2013 was 1,000 or $1,091 million. 17 full years later, it only went down to $956 million. Even in 21, it's still at $800,000,000. So depending on the timing of this one that's gonna come out, our debt is still phenomenal that's there. Um when I had a conversation with the people from Tampa
the other day before the meeting on on Friday, before I actually met with Tampa Water staff over the phone, uh they were telling me how the debt was gonna be down substantially in eight years when this, you know, maybe take an effect. I says, Really? What's the number gonna be? Well they didn't know. So I asked them my own staff to Christine Sackett, to go draw me a graph, show me in four-year increments where these debt levels look to be so we know what type of debt we're at. Because if we're all regionally have made all this investment together, and we're gonna go look at paying this debt off, we should be paying it off together. And
if we're all buying water, and as growth goes, we anticipated these major investments that was gonna come that we'd all be sharing in, and if everybody's buying water from that's gonna bring the debt down quicker and then maybe when these numbers drop down substantially if they want to go out on their own to do another venture, so be it. But right now we've got a lot of, a lot of debt that we've got to pay off. And this would jeopardize all of that. And frankly. Pasco's gonna look out for Pasco. It's a regional plan. We made a decision
to join this, and I say that people before us to go make this regional plan work together. They've been working it. I have got complete faith in Matt Jordan to go through and actually look at all the alternatives they're bringing before us, to go spend a lot of money, a lot of time, and get hopes up that this might be a good way to go. I don't know.
So I'm gonna this is for my fellow commissioner since you both sit on Tampa Bay water.
Right.
Um And just from my own knowledge and the folks in the audience at home. This decision would have to go through the board.
Oh would
I mean you're the board that you s actually sit on.
Well here's the thing. Unless the
legislation passes. Unless the leg right, but if if the legislation passes, yes, that oversupers. But for for now, if t if the city of Tampa is asks you to do this, it has to go through your board, correct?
Right. And and our board too, sir. We we are we would be required this body would be required to vote on changes to that interlocal agreement. And if I'm not mistaken, it's one One veto kills the whole thing.
So it'd have to go through the board you both sit on first and then come to us afterwards.
Yeah. For it for that to pass as a change in the interloco agreement, it would have to pass By each member government correct to pass. If it doesn't
but it had to get through your board first.
It has to go through our board to come to you, right? Right.
And you have okay, and again, how many people sit on the Tampa Bay Water Board that you sit on? Nine. Nine sir. Nine. Yes sir. Dine. Two
from each county, one from each municipality. Two Yeah.
Okay, so that'd be city of Tampa, City of St. Petersburg.
And City of New Port Richey. And City
of New Port Richey. Okay. Okay.
I mean I'm just thinking out loud but I think it'd be From what you just said, Commissioner.
Wouldn't it be difficult for it to get through that border?
Well the the I mean was the executive committee was a two to one vote going through. I was there late to the meeting yesterday so I missed the presentation. Um This was eight to one even taking the next step forward the last time we talked about it, even getting past the executive committee. So You don't know what's gonna happen, but again. The guy I'm I'm so glad you made this an agenda item. I was delighted when I saw that. Sure. Um but this is an agenda item that's gonna be very critical. This would, I think, should even be making statements early that you know what? We
don't think you should be Don't improve that way until we get this debt set down significantly. We need to stay together as a regional plan and send that message out now rather than waiting to get the city chance to go build momentum to the legislature. And if it needs be we need to really look at any legislation. We've got a contract in place. We don't want the state legislature changing that contract.
This could start the water wars all over again, could it not? All over.
Yeah, we've we need to keep this group together and and go forward with what we've been doing for sin I guess since ninety-eight. And um changing that would not be to the best interest of Pasco County.
It's always good to reiterate where the majority of this water is actually coming from. That's what we can, right?
Yeah. So I mean I I think if if staff wants to even draw something up, maybe it should come before the board and we should actually send the messages a letter maybe from the chairman of the board all signed and saying we're gonna be very cautious looking at this all the way through that we are you know very conscious of this huge debt that we haven't wanna get that paid off before we start changing some major components in this agreement.
So your suggestion would be to um write a letter to your the board that you sit on and then we could write it also send it to our state legislators and the speaker of the house and send the president and and us with the governor's office too. Right.
Yeah. And highlight and highlight on the financials of the show in this chart.
Okay. So I think you have direction. Let's move forward with that.
One of the issues that Tampa was talking about is using reclaim water by putting it back in the ground being able to take that as a credit. And pull out potable water. That's what they're wanting to do.
We're putting it reclaim back at 4G, for example. Yes sir. Then we could just turn around and do the exact same thing.
But we've all yeah, but we're not choosing to
do that. But
no
but
we've also worked hard to play
that game.
Yeah, but we've also worked very hard in our county at taking and using reclaim water for irrigation to replace that. Sure. From using potable water. And it's been the avenue we've taken for a long time. And it's the right thing to do. It's conservation of our water, and our potable water is very valuable to us. And that's what we need to continue doing. So to say, you know, as long as you sell water to like golf courses and communities for irrigation and and other whatever other
issues and putting it back in the ground. for uh environmentally for the area like 4G Ranch is we're using that. There's a matter of fact there's already been, I got a report yesterday of um five hundred and thirty-five million gallons already been put in that area, 4G Ranch. In a few years you're gonna see a great environmental Plus to that area that environmentally and that uh this area out there.
We want to obviously in the short term and long term save our taxpayers dollars, keep the rates low, but at the same time concerns. Yeah. Right?
I'll
tell you,
Mr. Chairman, they are looking at our landscaping program that we have in place. They're pushing that so they actually go forward to actually do that. They'll they're looking at what the reclaim we we have done with kind of the model. in the area for doing it. So that's a a lot of good things that that the region is looking at doing, which is good. But I think you just brought up a phenomenal point. Uh when you talk about they're gonna go take their reclaim water, go pump it in the ground and pull other water back out so they don't have to buy from Tambay Water. Well you know what, if this whole agreement goes the same way, what's to say we wouldn't be able to do the
same thing. So even if the argument might be crafted to say, you know what, here's what could happen. If Tampa does this, what would prevent Pasco County or Penellas you could say from doing the exact same thing? And then what's gonna happen? This whole financial model is gonna collapse. Oh yeah. So I think I think you just brought up a brilliant point there.
Yeah, that doesn't need to happen there. So
No, we don't need that. We need to stay together as a region. Yeah. We've got things going good the right way. We need to stick together.
Yeah.
So
see
they think that
including that and and apologize. Including that in the in the letter too, and then just make sure we review it at our at our next board building and board meeting, then we can sign off on it. Right, right. Excellent.
But Tampa Bay Water pulls that water out of the ground and sells it to all the member governments, and it belongs to us once we buy that water. Right. But when it becomes recently, when it becomes recently clean water, it's ours as long as we're pumped out on golf course and these other uses. But once we put it back in the ground, like at 4G Ranch, it goes back to being ownership by the state. Because then Tampa Bay Water is the only source in our region that can pull that water out for potable water. And that keeps it together.
Yeah. Good discussion. Any other questions or comments?
No.
All right, moving on. Thank you so much. Thanks.