PAWTUCKET — When the new water treatment plant went on line a couple of weeks ago, City Council members gushed about the impact on the quality of the city’s drinking water.
But an application by the Water Supply Board for a sharp increase in water rates didn’t go down as well.
In fact, the application, technically a rate filing submitted to the state Public Utilities Commission, prompted one council member to suggest selling the Pawtucket water system lock, stock and barrel.
City Councilor Donald R. Grebien said after last night’s City Council meeting that he got the idea from a proposal to sell the Providence city’s water system, which includes the Scituate Reservoir, several water treatment plants and a 900-mile network of pipes.
Providence City Council members hope that selling their water system will fetch $400 million to $600 million that they can use to pay off the city pension system’s unfunded liability, or debt.
Grebien said he wants to explore the possibility that selling the Pawtucket water system will produce a similar windfall.
When he first raised the possibility of a sale, however, Grebien didn’t present it as a moneymaker.
He offered it as an alternative to the proposed sharp increase in rates.
The rate increase that the Pawtucket Water Supply Board is seeking is designed to produce an additional $3.1 million a year, or an annual 17.4-percent increase in revenues, according to a letter to the council from Water Supply Board lawyer Joseph A. Keough Jr.
The rate increase would add $91 per year to the water bill of the average ratepayer, Keough wrote.
The letter didn’t sit well with Grebien.
“It disturbs me mentally that they’re putting in for a 17.4-percent increase during these economic times,” he said during the council meeting.
He asked the other council members to support him in sending a letter asking the administration of Mayor James E. Doyle to explore the possibility of selling the water system to a private operator.
“We have to look at being creative,” Grebien said. “If it’s a possibility, we ought to start looking at that.”
The six other council members present last night voted in favor of sending the letter.
But a couple had reservations, among them, the council member appointed to sit on the Water Supply Board, Thomas E. Hodge.
Hodge said it should be noted that part of the water system is already in the hands of a private operator — Earth Tech, the company hired to design, build and operate the water treatment plant.
“However, I’m not sure that I support the privatization of our water system. National Grid is private. They go for bigger increases than the water system. If we own it, we control it,” he said.
The Water Supply Board sells drinking water to more than 20,000 customers in Pawtucket, Central Falls and the Valley Falls section of Cumberland.
The Water Supply Board’s application for a rate increase was submitted to the PUC on March 28. There was no public announcement of the rate increase request, other than the letter to council members.
While the new water rates are proposed to take effect on April 28, the PUC’s usual practice is to suspend a rate request for six months while the attorney general’s Division of Public Carriers and Utilities investigates the matter.
The PUC then conducts public hearings on rate request.
Under the circumstances, Keough said in his letter to council members, the proposed rate increase is not expected to take effect for at least six months.