Municipal authority officials from an eight-county region visited Bradford when the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association Region 7 held its spring meeting May 23 at the Bradford Brew Station.
Hosting the meeting were PMAA Region 7 Director Rick Brocius, who is executive director of the Bradford Sanitary Authority, and PMAA Region 7 Assistant Director Steve Disney, who is executive director of the Bradford City Water Authority.
Region 7 comprises members throughout Armstrong, Cameron, Clarion, Elk, Forest, Jefferson, McKean and Warren counties.
Brocius reported that 33 municipal representatives attended the program.
“It was a successful event and a pleasure to feature some of Bradford’s history and the new brewery to our attendees from around the region,” he said.
Among the activities were a trivia exercise on Bradford’s oil history; updates from Joe Sullivan, director of education and training at the PMAA Harrisburg office; and a presentation on rate studies by Connie Heppenstall, senior project manager of Gannett Fleming Valuation and Rate Consultants.
“The presentation covered the most modern methods for conducting rate studies as established by the American Water Works Association’s M1 Manual,” said Brocius, who noted that Heppenstall is currently “facilitating rate study projects for both Bradford water and sanitary authorities.”
Disney explained how the water authority’s studies — a tapping fee study and a cost-of-service study — will be used by the water authority.
“These studies are used to evaluate actual costs for all areas of the system from the treatment plant all the way through the distribution system including utilities, labor, pumping, storage, operational materials and repairs, and capital,” he said. “They are vital to protecting both the interest of the authority customers and the authority itself.”
Brocius talked about the factors the rate studies consider.
“While it is certainly the goal of each authority to keep rates as low as possible, due diligence also requires that many factors such as revenue requirements, cost of service, affordability, operation and maintenance expense, capital improvements, debt service, and required reserves must be accounted for when properly setting rates,” he explained.
On Wednesday, Disney and Brocius provided The Era with a few details on their ongoing rate studies.
“It’s been over 12 years since the water authority had last conducted any studies relating to rates or tapping fees,” said Disney. “With the large capital project involving the new transmission main, the Authority thought it would be prudent to conduct up-to-date cost-of-service studies as well as tapping fee studies.”
The water authority is planning to install a redundant transmission main in an attempt to prevent a water crisis if there is a break in the aging transmission main that is in current use.
Disney estimates the cost-of-service study will be ready for full evaluation in 30 to 60 days. The water authority board is currently evaluating a draft form of the tapping fee study.
As for the sanitary authority, Brocius is not aware of the authority taking part in this kind of rate study before.
“BSA has historically relied on its engineering firms to supply the necessary information to determine appropriate rates,” he explained. Brocius said that this year the sanitary authority budgeted for the study “to ensure that the information supporting our rates was current and accurate.”
He noted the sanitary and water authorities were able to reduce some costs of the studies by conducting them at the same time.
“BSA does not have a specific timeframe established, but we do anticipate that the information will be available to aid in the 2020 budget preparations this fall,” according to Brocius.
Brocius summarized the aim of the study this way: “BSA’s goal for the rate study is to simply support that our rates are reasonable and enable us to deliver great customer service, repair and maintain aging infrastructure, and plan for the future.”
