A recent article in the Park Ridge Journal – one of the last by reporter Craig Adams who, unfortunately for Journal readers, has been re-assigned to a beat closer to his far northwest suburban home – reported that the City of Park Ridge is still exploring alternatives to the City of Chicago as a supplier of water (“City Still Exploring Water Alternatives,” 08.28.13).

Over the past couple of years the City began exploring alternate sources of water when Chicago started a series of rate hikes.  Given Chicago’s precarious financial condition resulting from decades of mismanagement, graft and corruption under “Li’l Richie” Daley, there’s no reason to believe – or even hope – that Chicago won’t continue to use its virtual monopoly power to bleed its suburban customers.

That being said, the cost of building a competing water treatment and distribution system, projected at between $180 and $400 million, makes it unaffordable unless a some sort of joint venture or consortium could be created to undertake the construction costs and lock in water price controls over a sufficiently long period of time to justify the major infrastructure cost.  And as pointed out in the Journal story, no such venture or consortium currently exists.

Park Ridge reportedly is under contract to Chicago through December 31, 2019.  How long it would take to actually construct an alternate treatment and distribution system is not yet clear, but it would almost certainly be a multi-year project that could be expected to consume at least 3 of the 6 years left on the City’s deal with Chicago.

So the City Council should be discussing NOW – while the analysis of the joint study the City commissioned last year is still valid – whether it really is serious about pursuing an alternate water source.  That would mean committing the attention and effort necessary to explore and pursue the creation of the joint venture or consortium needed to pull off an alternate infrastructure.  And that would also involve a decision of whether the City would be better off accepting a continuing water purchase relationship with Chicago, albeit while knowing that Chicago’s finances in 2019 might make even more extortionate water increases likely.

Whether City Staff is equal to the task of reviewing last year’s joint study report and undertaking the assignment of providing usable information and recommendations to the City Council is an open question.  But if Staff lacks the ability, perhaps this might be a project suited for another citizens’ task force – assuming there are enough capable engineers and business people ready, willing and able to provide useful input to the Council.

The City has more than enough other, more immediate matters to deal with than this one.  But 2019 is not that far off, especially if just the physical construction of an alternative water distribution network will take 2-3 years.

That’s why the City leadership should take some time, now, to at least decide pro-actively whether to fish or cut bait on this alternate water source issue.

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