From Deseret News archives:
Park City fee to jump
Cleaning up water will require 40% rate hike
Over the next two years, water rates in Park City will jump 40 percent, with the first half of that hike coming in July. That jump comes on top of an additional 20 percent increase made last year.
The increased income to the citywill help pay for about $9 million in new treatment plants and technology needed to keep the region's water up to state and federal standards.
"When you move to Park City, you're moving to a place that has well over 100 years of mining," city spokesman Myles Rademan said. "We've been faced with a number of capital facilities that we've had to build in order to improve the water quality."
About 40 percent of the city's water flows through mining tunnels, picking up heavy metals such as arsenic, lead and antimony. Antimony, a carcinogenic metal, has been the largest hurdle for the city in recent months after water samples failed to meet levels mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The city has still been using water with antimony that flows from the Spiro tunnel but has been diluting it with other city water until it finds a more permanent solution.
"There are only a few places in the country — Park City being one of them — that have ever exceeded that antimony contamination level," said Kevin Brown, director of the Utah Drinking Water Board.
Brown added Park City officials have been working to find a reliable method to remove the antimony from the water and are close to meeting the national standard. The Spiro tunnel water currently has antimony concentrations of 7-10 parts per billion, just a notch above the EPA standard of 6.
The newest treatment technology will also be used to purify water from the Judge tunnel and Park Meadow well, both of which have been producing water with varying levels of arsenic and lead, public works director Kent Cashel said.
"By no means are these (fee hikes) small increases, and people don't like paying more," he said. "But every gallon of water we pump to the residents benefits from what we're doing."
Although Rademan said Park City water has not violated federal levels with those metals, the EPA has been tightening its standards in recent years, and Park City wants to stay ahead of the curve.
"It's a moving target. As they learn more about it, those standards are always changing," he said. "Things that were considered safe five years ago may be different."
Rademan added that asking residents to pay for those improvements is tough, considering the city has reduced its water use by about 30 percent since the start of its conservation campaign.
Eventually, Rademan said, the city hopes to be less reliant on tunnel water by importing other sources and storing more groundwater. City officials also are looking at alternative funding methods via state and federal grants, he said.
"Who knows whether we're going to look back 100 years from now and say that was ridiculous, why did we spend all that money?" he said. "No one is quite sure what the health risks are, and the old miners pooh-pooh it. The EPA doesn't, and certainly we don't either."
The city will host a public information session on the rate hike Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Library and Education Center.
E-mail: estewart@desnews.com
