While the Piedmont Triad International Airport Authority takes some more heat, the Rhino’s John Hammer (unposted) takes a look at the other authority, the Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority. Hammer reports from the authority’s April 8 meeting that all is not nearly what it seems with the Randleman Dam:
….the project may suffer from the pump station blues for the foreseeable future. The project is at the stage where the bids for the water treatment plant can be awarded, and that seems to be going along well. The bids came in slightly over the estimate but well within the acceptable range for a $40 million project. It appears the bids could be awarded in June, as was the plan, except for the fact that High Point, with the support of Greensboro, agreed to help out by designing, building, operating and owning the pump station that will pump the treated water to Greensboro, High Point and Jamestown. This will put the financing for building the pump station in jeopardy, according to PTRWA Executive Director John Kime.
The ownership of the pump station has been settled, Hammer writes, but now operation of the pump will become an issue. But PTRWA’s consulting engineers are are saying that the pump station and the water treatment plant should be operated by the same people, and since PTRWA is going to operate the water treatment plant, common sense dictates they should operate the pump station, too. But Greensboro and High Point believe they should operate it since they’re building it. This latest issue could potentially hold up the Local Governance Commission’s financing for the water treatment plant.
Hammer primarily holds the City of High Point responsible for continually slowing the Randleman Dam project down “so it won’t have to spend more money for water it doesn’t need” via the extra line at the pump station. But he sure doesn’t cut Greensboro City Manager Mitchell Johnson any slack for agreeing to work with High Point on the pump station — without the knowledge or consent of the City Council, that is.
