How much more will water cost us every month?

It has been many years of research and planning that has gone into the water plant renovations being contemplated to begin soon. Reasoning for renovation are increased capacity and new technologies that provide safer water. Micro filtration, I am told, is the state of the art system that allows us to keep a smaller footprint with higher output. The cost of this project is expected to come in at over 25 million dollars. These new costs will be shared among users in Highland Park as well as our customers in Deerfield, Bannockburn, and Lincolnshire.

Highland Park should be a leader in Water Conservation and demonstrate good stewardship of our natural waters. But just last week I commented with great concern on several statements our City Manager Limardi made talking about selling water to far western suburbs that currently don't have Lake Michigan water. How much water can we take out of the Lake until it starts to shrink? We are the only Great Lake State that can even legally take water out of this watershed whose Highland Park boundary is approximately Greenbay Road. We can't take this body of water for granted!

So, if we don't sell more water and further decrease our use by let say 25%, do we need this renovation and if so, can we afford it? To this last point, I have been asking for the last few years to create a spread sheet showing the anticipated rate increases while inserting the variables of both water consumption decreases, projected operating costs, and the debt service.

Waiting for an answer........ and until I am convinced this won't overburden our citizens I will not support rate increases based on the 2006 projections that don't include all the variables I described.