Letter: STPUD President's Outgoing Message

To Editor: My term as South Tahoe Public Utility District's (STPUD) board president ends in December, so I wanted to offer up a few thoughts on my way out the door. I was elected to the board in 2000 by the choice of just under 7,000 local voters, and have done my best to represent your interests over the last 4 years. The choice to not run for re-election was a difficult one, but it was a personal choice. There are some very good candidates to replace me; I’ll get to that in a minute.

The district’s job is to serve you with great quality drinking water and dispose of your sewage reliably, safely, and cost-effectively. That’s it. Occasionally, agencies attempt to stray from their mission, but I’ve attempted to keep us within ours. Drinking water and wastewater are big enough jobs, thank you!

Our service area is largely built out, so dealing with growth is not our key issue. Nor is water supply; our groundwater basin can supply nearly double our projected water demands. All of our wastewater is treated to a high level in town, then pumped over Luther Pass to the Woodfords area where we recycle 100 percent of the effluent on crops. That is going well.

Our biggest problem is that our pipes, tanks, wells, pump stations, and other system elements were built about 50-60 years ago; nearly all at the same time. And they all got old at once and need to be replaced now (yesterday, actually). Pipe leaks and breaks are patched by staff, but the number of those each year keeps going up. So the board bit the bullet during my term and we amped up the replacement program, especially on the water side. It is costly (all construction is costly nowadays, especially in Tahoe), and the replacement program is going to take a long time. We are targeting about 4-5 miles of water main replacement each year, and at that rate, it will take decades. The cost of even that modest replacement program has hit your water and sewer rates to the tune of nearly 10% per year, and that trend will continue for the next 5 years and maybe beyond. I wish that I had better news on that, but I don’t. The work must be done.

I urge the next board to stick to the meat and bone replacement priorities. It is expensive enough to just do that. “Nice to do” things may have to wait. Ten percent rate increases are at the upper end of what people can deal with. (For those that are truly in a hardship situation, the district has a rate assistance program for you. Contact customer service and they can walk you through it.) I have met with all of the STPUD board candidates who have graciously submitted their paperwork for the November election, and I am endorsing Chris Cefalu and Joel Henderson for the two open positions. I believe those two candidates will understand the issues brought before them, challenge all expenditures, and focus spending on the key challenges ahead.

I wish the board and staff well. It has been my pleasure to serve!

- Dave Peterson