By Tom Ayres, Senior Staff Writer
The Town and Village of Woodstock has begun a substantive, community-wide discussion about the future of the Woodstock Aqueduct Company, the privately owned utility that provides water to 777 residential and commercial users and nearly 100 fire hydrants in the municipality.
In the aftermath of devastating flooding crippled the local system, occasioning boil water and do-not-drink notices over the course of ten days from July 10-20, representatives of the 143-year-old Aqueduct Company convened a public forum at the Woodstock Town Hall on Wednesday, Aug. 31, to discuss the present status of the water system, as well as potential plans for the privately held company. More than 60 Woodstock residents, largely users of the local water system, were on hand at Town Hall or on Zoom for a wide-ranging panel presentation.
Presenters on the panel organized by the Woodstock Aqueduct Company included the company’s principal shareholder, Jireh Billings, whose great-grandfather Frederick Billings founded the local water system in 1880; Craig Jewett, the principal engineer with Otter Creek Engineering in Rutland and East Middlebury, who has been doing a comprehensive study of the Woodstock water system in collaboration with officials from the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources (ANR); and longtime local dairy farmer and former Woodstock Selectboard chair Tom Debevoise, a member of the Woodstock Aqueduct Company board whose late father gifted him with two shares in the water system many years ago. The forum was moderated by former State Rep. Charlie Kimbell.
The opening presentation by Jewett on the state-mandated engineering, upgrade, and construction challenges facing the aging water system over the next three to seven years was the linchpin for the spirited discussion between Kimbell, the panelists, and forum attendees that followed. At the heart of the matter is the need to bring the system into compliance with contemporary state regulations, particularly as they relate to assuring that water pressure levels in the system are sufficient to meet the needs of firefighters in the community.
“This is not a new subject. It’s been a subject related to this water system for about as long as the system has been around. It ebbs and flows as far as criticality and importance are concerned,” Jewett told his listeners. “Essentially the state of Vermont — for water systems that provide fire protection — has a minimum standard of flow and pressure that any public water system needs to meet if it provides fire protection,” the consulting engineer continued. “There are public water systems that do not have fire hydrants — they don’t have the same requirements. But water systems that have fire suppression as part of what they provide have minimum standards of pressure and volume that need to be met. The system needs to be able to provide 500 gallons a minute to that fire hydrant while maintaining 20 psi worth of pressure in the rest of the system.”
The Aqueduct Company system is presently functioning well below the state-required levels for water pressure and volume, which is a major reason why Jewett and the water company have been working with state DEC officials to assess the present status of the system and devise a plan for significant replacement or improvements to water lines, storage tanks, and delivery systems over the next three to seven years. Jewett said the challenges ahead for the water company are as much a public safety issue as a public health matter.
In a rare display of openness and transparency for a privately held firm, Kimbell, Jireh Billings, and Debevoise followed up on Jewett’s remarks by sharing the Woodstock Aqueduct Company’s current balance sheet and recent profit-and-loss statements, demonstrating that the water company is not in a position to obtain loans to fund the critically needed work in times ahead because it is already heavily indebted for significant system upgrades made in recent years. In essence, the company does not have the collateral to take on any further debt. “The vast majority of that [current] debt has to do with the things that the Aqueduct Company has consistently done over time to improve the system,” Debevoise said.
Kimbell and Billings each said there were three paths forward for the Woodstock Aqueduct Company, particularly given the significant capital improvements that must be made to the system in the next three to seven years, as detailed by Jewett.
“Once you have a certain price tag, the question is, ‘How can these investments be financed?’” Kimbell asked rhetorically. “There are a couple of options,” he continued. “The Woodstock Aqueduct Company could go out and try to raise outside capital, but right now there is no ability to do that. The second option is that the town could buy the Aqueduct Company system and then would make the improvements and fund them through normal public project financing.
“The third option — and it is possible — is that the Woodstock Aqueduct Company is sold to an outside group of private equity investors,” Kimbell said. “That’s not a scare tactic — it exists. It is a reality that there are those companies that exist that may want to buy a company like the Woodstock Aqueduct Company. And what is their strategy at that point? Raise the rates a little bit. You lose that local control. So it’s one of three things: the Aqueduct Company finds the money somehow, the municipality takes it over, or it sells to an outside investor.”
Billings then spoke candidly, sharing his insights into the evolution of the Woodstock water system over the past 143 years, multiple efforts by company owners to get the town to take over the system, and his hopes for the future of Woodstock Aqueduct Company.
“There’s a point that I’d like to make about my family and others in town who built the company in 1880,” Billings told the forum attendees. “My great-grandfather and his brother, along with several other local businessmen, went to the town in 1880 to try to get the town to make a public water system. After several attempts and not being successful, they formed this privately held company — and that’s how it’s remained. Future generations — I’m talking about my grandfather and my father — both approached the town, as I have over the years.
“The main reason is because I know I’m not going to be here forever — and I think the most important thing is that Woodstock controls its own water. That’s what’s the most important thing to me — and that was the most important thing to my ancestors,” Billings added. “So we need to find a way to make sure that we keep local control. And the idea of an outside equity company or something like that coming in here would be the worst thing for all of us.”
Following presentations by Kimbell, Jewett, Billings, and Debevoise, the forum was thrown open to questions and comments from the floor. Several speakers addressed issues of cost concerns and questioned which taxpayers were going to foot the bill for a potential town purchase of the Aqueduct Company and for the cost of future enhancements to the water system moving forward — the users of the system, predominantly those who reside in the Village core and nearby areas, or taxpayers townwide. Others raised more immediate questions about the status of ongoing repairs to the current water system in the wake of the July flooding.
At Kimbell’s direction, forum participants were asked to suggest topics for more detailed discussion at future forums, the next one of which is likely to be scheduled by Woodstock Aqueduct Company officials when Jewett’s report to state authorities nears 90-percent completion, likely in November. Among the issues forum attendees said they’d like to see addressed in more detail are a formal valuation of the worth of the water company for potential purchase purposes; a comparison of rates between Woodstock and other local water systems; whether a cooperatively owned system might be a viable option; whether the town has the financial and management capacity to take over the system; and what interim steps there may be to assure adequate water pressure for fire suppression while awaiting the results and recommendations flowing from the ongoing Otter Creek Engineering study.
Reporting on flood-related repairs, Billings told the audience that replacement of a damaged water main in Woodstock’s East End near Billings Farm was completed in mid-July and that a temporary water line atop the Elm Street bridge will be replaced by a permanent line that will be suspended from the underside of the bridge. The new line will replace the pipe that formerly ran under the river beneath the bridge. That line was fractured in the July 10 flood.
“We’re hoping to get that going soon,” Billings commented. “I have a contractor lined up and ready to go. I’ve met with the structural engineer and we should have the estimates within a week,” he concluded. Strengthening of the bridge infrastructure to support the added weight of the water line and installation of the new line under the bridge could commence as early as October, Billings concluded.