By Chris Butler | Published Thursday, October 2, 2008
The city of Rhome might share its water with the city of Aurora within the next two weeks assuming officials with the two cities can agree on the proposed terms of the matter.
Rhome currently receives one million gallons of water a day from the Walnut Creek Special Utility District, although it has the capacity to receive, an additional million gallons. That's up to two million gallons of water a day.
Rhome might sell some of the additional water to the city of Aurora, if a 10-year agreement is made.
"Rhome has positioned itself to get more water than it needs," said Rhome Mayor Mark Lorance. "We can sell the water wholesale and would love to sell to other entities. If you look at usage per capita, all the people of Rhome are not the ones using all of the water."
The Aurora City Council will decide on Thursday if it wants to go through with such an agreement, including how much water the city is interested in paying for, said Aurora City Administrator Toni Kelly-Richardson.
"Right now we are just trying to get water to provide to one household at a new construction site," she added.
Lorance said other residents of Aurora will also want to tap into the water line at some point. Aurora city officials, though, are only interested in getting water for that one household. They aren't interested in buying "a huge chunk of it" for even more residents until they receive some sort of grant to help them financially.
Rhome city council members will discuss the matter at their Oct. 9 meeting, assuming Aurora city officials decide on Thursday if they want to go through with the agreement, Lorance said.
The city of Aurora is primarily on a well system. Richardson said this is a first step toward getting the city on water from Rhome.
"Even though it's one household, it's just a starting point for us right now. We have to at least do this before we can apply for the grant, which is $350,000," she said.
