Tony's Bethany Beach Newsletter
July 12, 2012
Water Tower

The Town of Bethany Beach needs a new water tower! 

Our community needs a new water tower in order to ensure our water remains safe to drink and to ensure we are able to deliver water in the event of an emergency.  The need for a new water tower, combined with an extraordinary opportunity to receive a long-term loan at less than 3% interest from the State of Delaware, creates a situation where the Town would be able to build a second water tower with no increase in water rates! 

In the next few pages we talk about the history of our water system, who we provide water to, discuss the current water system, alternatives to a water tower and why we need a second, additional water tower. We will outline possible locations for a tower, the costs associated with each and finally how the Town will pay for this project. 

Who do we serve and how do our water rates compare with other local providers. 

The Town provides water to 2,877 customers in Bethany Beach. The Town also provides water to an additional 679 customers outside of Bethany Beach in the communities of Savannah’s Landing and the Salt Pond as a result of agreements the Town entered into with those communities prior to them being built. 

The Town’s water usage rates are the best in area. An average year round resident uses 40,000 gallons of water in a year. Using 40,000 gallons as a measure, a Bethany Beach resident pays $338 a year (including the Water Bond Sinking Fee), an Ocean View resident pays $619, a Sea Colony resident $505 and other surrounding developments $564. 

The Town’s water rates are low because the Town closely monitors and manages the financial aspects of its water system. Unlike many governments that mix and mingle revenues from different sources, the Town’s water system is a stand-alone enterprise fund whose total revenue pays only for expenses directly related to the water system itself. The Town does not use fees and revenues collected for its water system to fund anything else in Town government!

History of our water system 

Bethany Beach began its water service to the community in 1951. In 1952, the Town constructed its first water tower at the site of the Town Hall. That tower was capable of holding 100,000 gallons of water and the tower was 100’ tall.

Demands on the system grew and in 1980 the Town constructed a new water storage tower (standpipe) that was capable of holding 1,000,000 million gallons of water. This standpipe was not a typical water tower where water is contained in an overhead bulb, but rather a design called a standpipe which is simply a cylindrical tower (in our instance the dimensions of the cylinder are 38’ wide, 120’ tall) holding water from its base at ground level to the top of the cylinder at 120 feet.

Standpipes are generally gravity-based water storage devices, traditionally built in hilly or mountainous areas, and standpipes are traditionally constructed at elevations significantly higher than the communities they serve. Gravity pulls water from the base of the elevated standpipe and delivers water into the system. In a traditional standpipe installation if you turned your faucet on and did not replenish the water in the standpipe you could drain the standpipe dry. The entire million gallons in the standpipe would simply run out.

In 1980, Bethany Beach made the unusual choice to build a standpipe in one of Delaware’s “flattest” communities instead of a traditional water tower. Because the base of our one million gallon, 120’ tall standpipe is built at the same elevation as the rest of the community it serves, gravity can only pull water from the top 30’ of the tower. Only 250,000 gallons of the 1,000,000 gallons of water in the standpipe is deliverable at acceptable levels of water pressure. Acceptable water pressure means that it doesn’t take an hour for the tank in your toilet to refill after it has been flushed or that there is enough water pressure at the fire hydrant close to your home to fight a fire.                                         

This standpipe was built at a site the Town had acquired for the purpose of constructing a water tower and support structures for that water tower.  This is the site of our current water plant located between Collins Street and Lekites Avenue.

OUR WATER TREATMENT PLANT

Water that we pull from our wells comes from the only aquifers available to us. This water, raw as it comes from the ground, contains excessive iron and natural organic matter and is corrosive. These problems with our raw water created a need for the Town to process and treat its water. In 1990, the main components of our water treatment system and water plant were constructed to deal with these issues. An aerator, clarifying pond, mineral retention ponds, a water processing building containing high lift pumps, chemical injection systems, clearwell and other treatment and processing systems were constructed on the Collins Street property.  The water system and treatment facility at Collins Street has had no other significant construction or improvements since 1990.

WHY DO WE NEED ANOTHER WATER TOWER? 

Water age, how “old” the water is that comes out of our faucets, is not something that many us give much thought to, but the age of the water in our water system is a serious problem for our community. When we speak of water age we are talking about the length of time between the water first being touched by chlorine and the time it actually runs out of the faucet in the users home.

Our water, like most potable water in the civilized world, is treated with chlorine. When chlorine interacts with natural organic matter it produces both the chemical triaholmethane and haloacetic acids in proportion to the amount of natural organic matter it comes in contact with.

There are literally hundreds of chemicals created when water is treated with disinfectants but triaholmethane and haloacetic acids are among those most closely regulated and they have been linked to birth defects and cancer.

Since our raw water has an excessive amount of natural organic matter when it is pumped from our wells, after it is first treated with chlorine and sent into our water system, it has a high level of trihaolmethane and halaocetic acid, but is still well within any federal or state standards.

But now the real problem occurs; the longer water sits in the system exposed to chlorine, the more trihalomethane and halaocetic acids are formed.

Water age is a problem with many seasonal communities because homes sit vacant during the off season and water sits in the system for long periods of time. Many seasonal communities with similar problems with their raw water supplies are able to effectively deal with those problems. But Bethany Beach has a huge obstacle to overcome when dealing with water age and that is the previously mentioned standpipe at the Collins Street Water Plant.

You will recall that we said only 250,000 gallons of the 1 million gallons in the standpipe is usable in the system. Essentially the bottom 750,000 gallons of water in the standpipe hold the top 250,000 gallons at an elevation where it can be used. Not being able to exchange or rotate new water for older water, not being able to decrease the amount of water in the standpipe to a reasonable level of 200,000 or 300,000 gallons combined with the excessive amount of natural organic matter in our raw water create a significant problem for our water system!

In 2005, the Town of Bethany Beach was actually cited by the State of Delaware for having amounts of triahalomethane in its water system that were over 175% above legal limits. The Town was mandated to notify all homeowners by letter of the citation and began to aggressively attack the water age issue.

The first thing the Town did was to modify its chlorine application at the water plant. Next it began a practice that continues to this day, opening fire hydrants throughout the system and “flushing” the system. In any given year the Town flushes over 4 million  gallons of water in order to ensure that we have no issues with the chemical by-products of our disinfection process.

By any measure this wasting of 4 million gallons of our processed and treated water is wasteful and environmentally unsound! However, it is the only solution that exists today in order to keep the water in our system fresh.

Since the citing in 2005 and with new procedures in place, the Town has had no issues with the quality of its water. The State of Delaware and the Town itself constantly measure that quality.

We have, with a band-aid fix, dealt with our water age problem but the problem needs to corrected and properly dealt with. The Town has studied and reviewed potential solutions and has eliminated all but one and that is a water tower.

ALTERNATIVES TO A WATER TOWER CONSIDERED

A hydropnuematic tank system with a pump station, a ground storage tank with a pump station, and a stand-alone pump house have all been considered as solutions to the Town’s issues with water age.

All of these solutions would allow the Town to pull water out of the base of standpipe, allowing the Town to keep much smaller amounts of water in the standpipe alleviating water age problems. These solutions, at a minimum, would require structures of anywhere between 1,200 and 2,500 sq. feet on ground space at the Town’s water plant, and would be technically complicated and electric dependent.  All of these solutions would be expensive, albeit not as expensive as constructing a new water tower.

WHY A WATER TOWER IS OUR BEST SOLUTION  

Our engineers recommend that the Town construct a new, second, water tower at the Collins Street Water Plant. It is recommended that the tower hold 500,000 gallons of water and that our water system be designed to allow both the existing standpipe and the new tower to work together or separately depending on the needs of the system and the time of year.

This design recommendation fulfills a number of critical needs:

Water Age – first and foremost a water tower capable of holding 500,000 gallons of water and operating independently of the standpipe off-season, completely eliminates all issues with the age of our stored water. The amount of water stored in an overhead water tower, of the type our engineer has recommended we build, can be controlled to the gallon.

Redundancy and Failsafe – Today if we have a significant mechanical problem or failure with the standpipe requiring extensive repair, there is no Town back up system to deliver water to our water system. If this problem occurs off-season, we would hope to establish an interconnection with a neighboring community’s water service until the problem was repaired or corrected. Should a problem occur during the summer season, an interconnection meeting the Town’s water needs would be impossible. A new water tower guarantees that either the new tower or the existing standpipe can be placed into service independently until repairs are made or issues resolved and the system restored.

Regulatory Requirements –The State of Delaware recommends, but does not require at this time, that the Town of Bethany Beach have a minimum of 1.3 million gallons of water on hand and available 24 hours-a-day during the summer season. A second water tower holding 500,000 gallons of water, used in conjunction with our existing standpipe, allows the Town to meet that regulatory requirement. Because of the large amount of water the community uses during the summer season, using the standpipe as part of our system is not a problem.

WHERE WOULD A NEW TOWER BE CONSTRUCTED?

Three different locations have been considered for placement of a second water tower:

·         the Collins Street Water Plant where associated costs would be $2.6 million

·         the Church/Neff property where the costs would be $3.96 million

·         the Town’s Public Works Yard where the costs would be $5.4 million

At a recent Special Town Council Meeting the Bethany Beach Town Council voted to select the Collins Street Water Plant as the location for the new water tower; the least expensive ($2.6 million) of the options available to the Town.

HOW WILL THE TOWN PAY FOR A NEW WATER TOWER?

Since 1980 The Town of Bethany Beach has paid for the major components of its water system infrastructure through a separate fee that property owners pay with their May tax bills.The fee on the tax bill is called “Water Bond Sinking Fund” because the two major water system infrastructure enhancements the Town has made since 1980 were paid for with municipal bond issues.

The first bond issue in 1980 was for $875,000 and paid for the construction of the Towns’ standpipe. This bond issue was paid off in 2007. The second bond issue for 3.6 million dollars was in 1989 and paid for the construction of the Town’s water plant facility and other costs related to that construction. The 1989 bond issue will be paid off in November of 2014

The Water Bond Sinking Fund fee itself is based on the front footage of a taxpayer’s property with a minimum charge based on 50 feet of frontage. The fee has varied in the past; the fee has been as high as $1.70 per frontal foot and is currently $1.07. This means the average homeowner in Bethany Beach pays $53.50 a year to the Water Bond Sinking Fund.

As previously mentioned, the Town will retire all of its Water Bond Sinking Fund debt in November 2014. This would allow the Town to borrow money for a new water tower without increasing the fee that property owners pay for the Water Bond Sinking Fund!

The retirement of this debt comes at a time when the Town has an opportunity to take advantage of a loan offered by the State of Delaware to enhance water systems throughout the State. The loan is offered by the Delaware Division of Public Health and allows the Town to borrow money for enhancements to the Town’s water system at a rate that is 62.5% of the prevailing municipal rate. The loan that Bethany Beach would apply for would have a 20-year term and a rate less than 3% (we believe closer to 2.5%).

With a loan amount of $2.6 million, a 20-year term, and a rate of 3% or less the Town could even lower the Water Bond Sinking Fund from its current rate of $1.07 per frontal foot to $.76 if the Town wanted to pay the loan for a 20-year term. But since there is no penalty for prepayment on this loan, if the Water Bond Sinking Fund is kept at its current rate of $1.07, the Town would be able to pay the loan off in 13 years and save over $320,000 in interest!

THE TOWN NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT AND VOTE ON SEPTEMBER 8^TH TO BUILD A NEW WATER TOWER

We have spoken about the history of our water system, its current condition, why we need a new water tower, and how we can pay for that tower. What the Town needs now is your support to move this worthwhile project forward. 

In their wisdom, the Town’s founders made sure that Town government could not borrow large sums of money or borrow those large sums for long terms without voter approval.

Since the term of the loan we have discussed is for 20 years, voters will have an opportunity to vote on a referendum to borrow money to pay for this project in a voter referendum to be held the same date as the Town’s annual general election, September 8^th.

All citizens eligible to vote in a general election are eligible to vote on this referendum issue. There will be absentee balloting and the polls will be open from 12 pm until 6pm on September 8^th for those choosing to vote in person.

The ballot item regarding this issue will read:

“ The Town Council proposes to borrow an amount not to exceed $2,600,000 at an interest rate of less than 3% from the Division of Public Health, Office of Drinking Water, State Revolving Fund for the purpose of construction of a new water tower within the Town of Bethany Beach. 

(   ) For the proposed borrowing

(  ) Against the proposed borrowing “

We strongly encourage you to vote “For the proposed borrowing”!!

We know this mailing may raise a number of questions and in order to accommodate that interest, the Town will be hosting a Special Meeting on Saturday, August 11 at 10 am in the Bethany Beach Town Hall. Please plan on attending if you have any interest in the Town’s Water System or the proposed financing for the Town’s new water tower.

In addition, please do not hesitate to contact the Town Manager’s Office if you should have questions about any information presented in this mailing. You may speak to the Town Manager directly or make an appointment to meet with him. Staff can be contacted by calling 302-537-3771 or by emailing admin@townofbethanybeach.com

Town Manager's Office
Town of Bethany Beach
214 Garfield Parkway
Bethany Beach, DE 19930
302-537-3771

Click on any link on the left side of this page to find information on that subject.