Showing posts with label Orange Beach Development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orange Beach Development. Show all posts
Friday, August 13, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
EIS | Foley Land Cut | Gulf Intracoastal Waterway | Gulf Shores & Orange Beach, AL
EIS | Foley Land Cut | Gulf Intracoastal Waterway | Gulf Shores & Orange Beach, AL: "Comment Period Closed
—January 23, 2010"
This EIS is being prepared to assess potential impacts associated with mixed-use waterfront development planned along the Foley Land Cut portion of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in southern Baldwin County, Alabama. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Mobile District, will use this EIS in making permitting decisions under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act, and NEPA. The EIS is a complete evaluation of the positive and negative effects, including the secondary and cumulative effects associated with development along the shoreline. The EIS analyzed the following major issues: hydrologic and hydraulic regimes, threatened and endangered species, essential fish habitat and other marine habitat, air quality, cultural resources, wastewater treatment capacities and discharges, drainage discharges, transportation systems, waterway capacity, hurricane evacuation, and socioeconomic impacts.
The EIS evaluated a range of alternatives to the proposed action, including the no action alternative. The no action alternative represents a continuation of current permitting activity, by the Corps. Information obtained following the public scoping meeting were considered in finalizing the array of alternatives evaluated in the EIS and included alternative methods of issuing permits, as appropriate.
—January 23, 2010"
This EIS is being prepared to assess potential impacts associated with mixed-use waterfront development planned along the Foley Land Cut portion of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in southern Baldwin County, Alabama. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Mobile District, will use this EIS in making permitting decisions under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act, and NEPA. The EIS is a complete evaluation of the positive and negative effects, including the secondary and cumulative effects associated with development along the shoreline. The EIS analyzed the following major issues: hydrologic and hydraulic regimes, threatened and endangered species, essential fish habitat and other marine habitat, air quality, cultural resources, wastewater treatment capacities and discharges, drainage discharges, transportation systems, waterway capacity, hurricane evacuation, and socioeconomic impacts.
The EIS evaluated a range of alternatives to the proposed action, including the no action alternative. The no action alternative represents a continuation of current permitting activity, by the Corps. Information obtained following the public scoping meeting were considered in finalizing the array of alternatives evaluated in the EIS and included alternative methods of issuing permits, as appropriate.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Nonprofit eyes Orange Beach for arts facility
Originally Published by the Mobile Press Register
Link: http://www.al.com/news/press-register/baldwin.ssf?/base/news/125136456919590.xml&coll=3
Beach CITE Studios had earlier agreed to build education center in Gulf Shores
Thursday, August 27, 2009
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter
ORANGE BEACH — A nonprofit that earlier this summer struck a deal to build and operate a 6,700-square-foot art education center on city property in Gulf Shores has backed out of that deal and instead proposed putting its facility in the next city over.
Beach CITE Studios Inc. struck a 99-year, $1-a-year lease agreement with the Gulf Shores City Council in February. Its leadership said in June that it expected to open its art center at the corner of West 19th Avenue and West Second Street early next year but that deal fell apart.
As the nonprofit sought approval for its building designs this summer, Gulf Shores officials sought to develop the public space with green building techniques, but Beach CITE Studios representatives said adding things like landscaped stormwater retention basins and a permeable parking lot would price the project out of their budget.
"At the end of the day we just had a different vision," said Jim Coughlin, the nonprofit's executive director. "We were virtually devastated that didn't work out."
About a month ago, the nonprofit approached Orange Beach leaders about building their facility on municipal property along Canal Road just south of the city's Arts Center and The Hot Shop, a public glass-blowing studio that opened this month.
Mayor Tony Kennon said that the nonprofit would build and operate the studio on public land at no cost and that there would be no city money involved.
Should the arrangement fail after the facility is built, Orange Beach would get to keep the structure, he said.
Beach CITE Studios — CITE stands for community interactive teaching experience — was founded last October as a 501(c)3 organization by area residents Dan and Linda Scott and Drew Osika. A donation from the Gulf Shores-based Camille Schroeder Charitable Foundation, which Coughlin also runs, is paying for construction of the facility and its initial operating funds, but the organization has said it plans further fundraising.
Coughlin said the building proposed for Orange Beach is virtually the same as the one that had been planned in Gulf Shores: "There will be a culinary kitchen, dance studio, music room, three or four different rooms for painting and things of that nature, a creative writing lab.
"We're trying to reach out to a variety of arts."
Coughlin has said he envisions the facility offering both private lessons and group instruction in several disciplines. During the day the focus would be on programs for preschool and home-schooled students and senior citizens. After-school, evening and summer programs are also anticipated, along with recitals, showings and other events.
During a Tuesday work session, each member of Orange Beach's City Council, Kennon and numerous residents voiced support for bringing the project to Orange Beach. Councilwoman Pattisue Carranza, however, said she'd prefer it be built behind the city's Adult Activity Center, on the Wolf Bay waterfront, leaving the area in front of the Arts Center available for festivals and other special events.
"They spent a lot of time exploring options in Gulf Shores and they came to us ... just over a month ago," Carranza said. "I don't want to be told this is the only place it can be; there are other options."
Other elected officials disagreed. They cited the added cost of filling in wetlands and building up a foundation at the waterfront site, the potential need for that space for a library expansion, and the desire to put all the art buildings in one spot as reasons they preferred the Arts Center parcel.
"After looking at the sites," said Councilwoman Joni Blalock, "I believe this is the best place for it."
Kennon said it was Coughlin's "prerogative to tell us this is the only option because it's his money."
The mayor's informal tally of the council members indicated that they would consider the proposal to build it near the Arts Center at the panel's Tuesday meeting.
Link: http://www.al.com/news/press-register/baldwin.ssf?/base/news/125136456919590.xml&coll=3
Beach CITE Studios had earlier agreed to build education center in Gulf Shores
Thursday, August 27, 2009
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter
ORANGE BEACH — A nonprofit that earlier this summer struck a deal to build and operate a 6,700-square-foot art education center on city property in Gulf Shores has backed out of that deal and instead proposed putting its facility in the next city over.
Beach CITE Studios Inc. struck a 99-year, $1-a-year lease agreement with the Gulf Shores City Council in February. Its leadership said in June that it expected to open its art center at the corner of West 19th Avenue and West Second Street early next year but that deal fell apart.
As the nonprofit sought approval for its building designs this summer, Gulf Shores officials sought to develop the public space with green building techniques, but Beach CITE Studios representatives said adding things like landscaped stormwater retention basins and a permeable parking lot would price the project out of their budget.
"At the end of the day we just had a different vision," said Jim Coughlin, the nonprofit's executive director. "We were virtually devastated that didn't work out."
About a month ago, the nonprofit approached Orange Beach leaders about building their facility on municipal property along Canal Road just south of the city's Arts Center and The Hot Shop, a public glass-blowing studio that opened this month.
Mayor Tony Kennon said that the nonprofit would build and operate the studio on public land at no cost and that there would be no city money involved.
Should the arrangement fail after the facility is built, Orange Beach would get to keep the structure, he said.
Beach CITE Studios — CITE stands for community interactive teaching experience — was founded last October as a 501(c)3 organization by area residents Dan and Linda Scott and Drew Osika. A donation from the Gulf Shores-based Camille Schroeder Charitable Foundation, which Coughlin also runs, is paying for construction of the facility and its initial operating funds, but the organization has said it plans further fundraising.
Coughlin said the building proposed for Orange Beach is virtually the same as the one that had been planned in Gulf Shores: "There will be a culinary kitchen, dance studio, music room, three or four different rooms for painting and things of that nature, a creative writing lab.
"We're trying to reach out to a variety of arts."
Coughlin has said he envisions the facility offering both private lessons and group instruction in several disciplines. During the day the focus would be on programs for preschool and home-schooled students and senior citizens. After-school, evening and summer programs are also anticipated, along with recitals, showings and other events.
During a Tuesday work session, each member of Orange Beach's City Council, Kennon and numerous residents voiced support for bringing the project to Orange Beach. Councilwoman Pattisue Carranza, however, said she'd prefer it be built behind the city's Adult Activity Center, on the Wolf Bay waterfront, leaving the area in front of the Arts Center available for festivals and other special events.
"They spent a lot of time exploring options in Gulf Shores and they came to us ... just over a month ago," Carranza said. "I don't want to be told this is the only place it can be; there are other options."
Other elected officials disagreed. They cited the added cost of filling in wetlands and building up a foundation at the waterfront site, the potential need for that space for a library expansion, and the desire to put all the art buildings in one spot as reasons they preferred the Arts Center parcel.
"After looking at the sites," said Councilwoman Joni Blalock, "I believe this is the best place for it."
Kennon said it was Coughlin's "prerogative to tell us this is the only option because it's his money."
The mayor's informal tally of the council members indicated that they would consider the proposal to build it near the Arts Center at the panel's Tuesday meeting.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
In fryer oil, city sees fuel savings
PUBLISHED by the MOBILE PRESS REGISTER
Beach town partnering with USA scientists to make biodiesel
Sunday, July 27, 2008
By RYAN DEZEMBER Staff Reporter
ORANGE BEACH — Though most have relegated dollar-a-gallon gas to nostalgia, some in this south Baldwin County resort city are batting around the phrase in the future tense.
City officials have teamed up with University of South Alabama researchers on a project to convert used cooking oils into biodiesel in hopes of reducing clogs in Orange Beach's sewer system, lessening the carbon emissions of municipal vehicles and saving taxpayers thousands of dollars a year in fuel costs.
Though Orange Beach and its partners at South Alabama's Chemical Engineering Department are still waiting to see if the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs funds its $128,000 grant request, the $15,000 reactor needed to make biodie sel is not out of the reach for the city considering the potential savings, municipal officials said.
The biggest factor in the program's success will be residents', and restaurants', willingness to provide the used cooking oil. To that end, City Hall plans to provide one-gallon containers to residents so they can collect and deliver their old oil to the Public Works Department starting next month.
If the state grant is awarded, Orange Beach must begin making biodiesel by October, so city officials are trying to ensure they have a batch to cook when the equipment is assembled and ready to go, said Coastal Resources Manager Phillip West.
Though the city is working to establish cooking-oil collection points throughout the city, grease will initially have to be taken to the Public Works office on William Silvers Parkway. West said Orange Beach is ready with a 750-gallon reservoir for the grease, and, according to the city's grant application, the machinery it plans to use can churn out biodiesel in 50-gallon batches.
Orange Beach is largely basing its efforts on a biodiesel program that has been run successfully for the past few years by Daphne Utilities, West said. The utility has told the Baldwin Register that by collecting about 100 gallons of grease a week they're able to reduce sewer spills by 40 percent and save about $10,000 a year on diesel.
Officials at the county-managed Magnolia Landfill have also started experimenting with biodiesel production in hopes of cutting into the fuel costs at the facility, which uses about 7,500 gallons of diesel every 10 days.
With 92 diesel engines — be they in trucks, tractors, generators or heavy equipment — Orange Beach burns upward of 50,000 gallons of diesel a year, said Coastal Resources Planner Nicole Woerner. Last year's diesel bill, she said, came to $116,257.30 for 49,311 gallons, a price of about $2.36 a gallon.
Prices have soared since last year, though, making $1-per-gallon biodiesel — which is about what Daphne Utilities pays to make fuel — all the more alluring. At the moment the city is paying about $4.15 per gallon, Public Works Director Tim Tucker said.
If, for example, Orange Beach can brew 5,000 gallons of biodiesel at $1 a gallon, it would represent a savings of $15,750, assuming the cost of diesel holds at $4.15 a gallon.
Besides the savings, the plan fits into Orange Beach's goal to clean up the local environment, an initiative that has seen Orange Beach start programs to pick up recyclables curbside, purchase equipment to rake litter from the beach, collect used motor oil for recycling and sell the tens of thousands of pounds of abandoned beach chairs and tents to a Pensacola scrap dealer.
"Hopefully we'll remove a lot of cooking oil from our sewer system," West said. "And the emissions from biodiesel are much cleaner."
Of biodiesel's three ingredients, the city would have to buy methanol and either sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide, said Srinivas Palanki, the chair of South Alabama's Chemical Engineering Department who is advising Orange Beach on the project.
The lone byproduct of biodiesel manufacturing is glycerin, which can easily be turned into decorative soaps used to promote the effort, or fed to the bacteria at the city's wastewater treatment plant, Palanki and Woerner said.
Much of the grant proceeds, should the city win them, will be used to pay the university to supply faculty and graduate students to help set up, tweak and study Orange Beach's efforts. Eventually, Palanki said, the process could be replicated in other area cities and school systems.
Beach town partnering with USA scientists to make biodiesel
Sunday, July 27, 2008
By RYAN DEZEMBER Staff Reporter
ORANGE BEACH — Though most have relegated dollar-a-gallon gas to nostalgia, some in this south Baldwin County resort city are batting around the phrase in the future tense.
City officials have teamed up with University of South Alabama researchers on a project to convert used cooking oils into biodiesel in hopes of reducing clogs in Orange Beach's sewer system, lessening the carbon emissions of municipal vehicles and saving taxpayers thousands of dollars a year in fuel costs.
Though Orange Beach and its partners at South Alabama's Chemical Engineering Department are still waiting to see if the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs funds its $128,000 grant request, the $15,000 reactor needed to make biodie sel is not out of the reach for the city considering the potential savings, municipal officials said.
The biggest factor in the program's success will be residents', and restaurants', willingness to provide the used cooking oil. To that end, City Hall plans to provide one-gallon containers to residents so they can collect and deliver their old oil to the Public Works Department starting next month.
If the state grant is awarded, Orange Beach must begin making biodiesel by October, so city officials are trying to ensure they have a batch to cook when the equipment is assembled and ready to go, said Coastal Resources Manager Phillip West.
Though the city is working to establish cooking-oil collection points throughout the city, grease will initially have to be taken to the Public Works office on William Silvers Parkway. West said Orange Beach is ready with a 750-gallon reservoir for the grease, and, according to the city's grant application, the machinery it plans to use can churn out biodiesel in 50-gallon batches.
Orange Beach is largely basing its efforts on a biodiesel program that has been run successfully for the past few years by Daphne Utilities, West said. The utility has told the Baldwin Register that by collecting about 100 gallons of grease a week they're able to reduce sewer spills by 40 percent and save about $10,000 a year on diesel.
Officials at the county-managed Magnolia Landfill have also started experimenting with biodiesel production in hopes of cutting into the fuel costs at the facility, which uses about 7,500 gallons of diesel every 10 days.
With 92 diesel engines — be they in trucks, tractors, generators or heavy equipment — Orange Beach burns upward of 50,000 gallons of diesel a year, said Coastal Resources Planner Nicole Woerner. Last year's diesel bill, she said, came to $116,257.30 for 49,311 gallons, a price of about $2.36 a gallon.
Prices have soared since last year, though, making $1-per-gallon biodiesel — which is about what Daphne Utilities pays to make fuel — all the more alluring. At the moment the city is paying about $4.15 per gallon, Public Works Director Tim Tucker said.
If, for example, Orange Beach can brew 5,000 gallons of biodiesel at $1 a gallon, it would represent a savings of $15,750, assuming the cost of diesel holds at $4.15 a gallon.
Besides the savings, the plan fits into Orange Beach's goal to clean up the local environment, an initiative that has seen Orange Beach start programs to pick up recyclables curbside, purchase equipment to rake litter from the beach, collect used motor oil for recycling and sell the tens of thousands of pounds of abandoned beach chairs and tents to a Pensacola scrap dealer.
"Hopefully we'll remove a lot of cooking oil from our sewer system," West said. "And the emissions from biodiesel are much cleaner."
Of biodiesel's three ingredients, the city would have to buy methanol and either sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide, said Srinivas Palanki, the chair of South Alabama's Chemical Engineering Department who is advising Orange Beach on the project.
The lone byproduct of biodiesel manufacturing is glycerin, which can easily be turned into decorative soaps used to promote the effort, or fed to the bacteria at the city's wastewater treatment plant, Palanki and Woerner said.
Much of the grant proceeds, should the city win them, will be used to pay the university to supply faculty and graduate students to help set up, tweak and study Orange Beach's efforts. Eventually, Palanki said, the process could be replicated in other area cities and school systems.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Sewer Land Swap will proceed in Orange Beach
Orange Beach also restarts negotiations to lease Josephine area lines
Friday, November 16, 2007
By RYAN DEZEMBER Staff Reporter
ORANGE BEACH -- After a nearly 18-month delay, the city and Alabama conservation officials have set a date later this month to finalize a land swap that will allow construction of a new $20 million municipal sewer treatment plant, Mayor Pete Blalock said Tuesday.
The two sides plan to close the transaction Nov. 27, which will give Orange Beach 40 acres south of the city's current treatment facility on Canal Road while the state will get 46 acres of maritime forest to be added to the Gulf State Park.
The trade had been delayed first because of problems with appraisals used in the deal, and later because of a disagreement between the state and the federal government over whether the state land could leave Alabama's hands.
But Blalock said those issues have been resolved and the city, as soon as the swap is finalized, plans to begin building a plant that can treat 10 million gallons per day with the ability to be expanded to handle 15 million gallons daily. The current plant can treat 5.5 million gallons a day.
Last month, with the future of the new plant still up in the air, the City Council voted to stop promising wastewater treatment service to large developments for 180 days. The fear was that with the delays in building the new plant, the current facility might be overloaded by new condos and shopping centers.
Councilman Jeff Silvers said the city has contractors already lined up to clear the site, and that construction will likely take 18 months.
Also Tuesday, the city officials said that after putting the brakes on negotiations to lease its Josephine-area sewer lines to a private company, it would resume working out a short-term deal with Alabama Utility Services LLC.
Orange Beach now bills 817 customers in the area north of the Intracoastal Waterway that the company seeks to take over. Each of those customers is charged, like city residents, $20 per month.
The Pell City sewer company, which is building a treatment plant in the Lillian area, seeks to lease those lines from the city for the first few years it's open. That would not only give the company some business to start with, but it would provide the city's sewer system some relief until the new plant is finished, city officials have said.
The city would then be able to reclaim the lines when its plant is completed.
City Administrator Jeff Moon said that after the company's initial proposal last month, three council members expressed hesitancy to lease the lines because the company said that it would likely need to raise rates for existing customers.
Council members said a recent 68 percent rate hike by Baldwin County Sewer Service, a separate private provider, caused them some pause in dealing with a private company.
But Alabama Utility Services has now offered to keep rates level for existing customers while charging a separate city regulated rate to customers it hooks up to the lines, its lawyer David Whetstone said Tuesday.
"We can assure you that it would be in the $30 to $40 range, which I think is a very competitive rate," Whetstone said.
Whetstone, who is Gulf Shores' city attorney and a former Baldwin County district attorney, said the company will adhere to city building standards when adding on to the lines and would allow the council to regulate its rates for all customers.
"It will bring a new competitor to the area and I think a competitor is good for everyone," Whetstone said. "I think competition leads to lower prices."
Council members, without taking an official vote, gave City Attorney Wanda Cochran permission to restart negotiations with the sewer company.
Friday, November 16, 2007
By RYAN DEZEMBER Staff Reporter
ORANGE BEACH -- After a nearly 18-month delay, the city and Alabama conservation officials have set a date later this month to finalize a land swap that will allow construction of a new $20 million municipal sewer treatment plant, Mayor Pete Blalock said Tuesday.
The two sides plan to close the transaction Nov. 27, which will give Orange Beach 40 acres south of the city's current treatment facility on Canal Road while the state will get 46 acres of maritime forest to be added to the Gulf State Park.
The trade had been delayed first because of problems with appraisals used in the deal, and later because of a disagreement between the state and the federal government over whether the state land could leave Alabama's hands.
But Blalock said those issues have been resolved and the city, as soon as the swap is finalized, plans to begin building a plant that can treat 10 million gallons per day with the ability to be expanded to handle 15 million gallons daily. The current plant can treat 5.5 million gallons a day.
Last month, with the future of the new plant still up in the air, the City Council voted to stop promising wastewater treatment service to large developments for 180 days. The fear was that with the delays in building the new plant, the current facility might be overloaded by new condos and shopping centers.
Councilman Jeff Silvers said the city has contractors already lined up to clear the site, and that construction will likely take 18 months.
Also Tuesday, the city officials said that after putting the brakes on negotiations to lease its Josephine-area sewer lines to a private company, it would resume working out a short-term deal with Alabama Utility Services LLC.
Orange Beach now bills 817 customers in the area north of the Intracoastal Waterway that the company seeks to take over. Each of those customers is charged, like city residents, $20 per month.
The Pell City sewer company, which is building a treatment plant in the Lillian area, seeks to lease those lines from the city for the first few years it's open. That would not only give the company some business to start with, but it would provide the city's sewer system some relief until the new plant is finished, city officials have said.
The city would then be able to reclaim the lines when its plant is completed.
City Administrator Jeff Moon said that after the company's initial proposal last month, three council members expressed hesitancy to lease the lines because the company said that it would likely need to raise rates for existing customers.
Council members said a recent 68 percent rate hike by Baldwin County Sewer Service, a separate private provider, caused them some pause in dealing with a private company.
But Alabama Utility Services has now offered to keep rates level for existing customers while charging a separate city regulated rate to customers it hooks up to the lines, its lawyer David Whetstone said Tuesday.
"We can assure you that it would be in the $30 to $40 range, which I think is a very competitive rate," Whetstone said.
Whetstone, who is Gulf Shores' city attorney and a former Baldwin County district attorney, said the company will adhere to city building standards when adding on to the lines and would allow the council to regulate its rates for all customers.
"It will bring a new competitor to the area and I think a competitor is good for everyone," Whetstone said. "I think competition leads to lower prices."
Council members, without taking an official vote, gave City Attorney Wanda Cochran permission to restart negotiations with the sewer company.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Orange Beach puts hold on sewer service pledges
Originally Published by the Mobile Press Register
Amid delays in new plant construction, Orange Beach negotiating lease of lines north of waterway
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
By RYAN DEZEMBERStaff Reporter
ORANGE BEACH -- With its plans for a new sewage-treatment plant in limbo, the City Council on Monday voted unanimously to put a hold on promises of wastewater service to developers.
In addition, the council began negotiations to lease municipal sewerage north of the Intracoastal Waterway to a private company that is building a treatment plant north of Lillian.
Besides saving Orange Beach money in servicing lines well outside the city's limits and relieving some pressure on the aging municipal system, it would give Alabama Utility Services LLC's burgeoning Blackwater Wastewater Treatment Facility an initial customer base to build from, city officials said.
"They need capacity and we need relief," City Administrator Jeff Moon said. "It really works out well in the short term."
Most of the details in the lease agreement have yet to be worked out, but both sides are considering a three-year deal in which Pell City-based Alabama Utility Services would take control of all of Orange Beach's lines north of the Intracoastal Waterway, excluding customers along the Foley Beach Express.
Though the private company would collect money from customers on those lines, be responsible for repairs and have the ability to add customers and extend the lines, the city would still own the sewerage and would have control over how much the company charges customers, city officials said.
Orange Beach bills 817 customers in the area that the company would take over. Like those living within the city, residential sewer customers there pay $20 a month.
Mayor Pete Blalock said that because of the cost of maintaining lines outside the city limits, Orange Beach will probably have to slightly raise rates for outlying customers even if the lease is not approved.
Alabama Utility Services owner Chris Matthews said that the rate he seeks will have a lot to do with how much the city charges in the lease agreement, but that, "Our rates are going to be in that $30 to $40 window."
City officials said they'd probably seek $5 per customer per month from the company. That would net Orange Beach about $49,000 annually.
Orange Beach obtained the lines, which extend in places into Elberta and Foley, when the city cobbled together its municipal sewer system by buying multiple private concerns.
Blalock said that the council will insist on strict controls over the rates Matthews can charge from the onset and may force him to get the council's approval for any hike in excess of annual changes to the consumer price index, a common gauge of inflation.
On Monday, Matthews and his lawyers, which include former Baldwin County District Attorney and current Gulf Shores City Attorney David Whetstone, met with Orange Beach officials for about 1½ hours to go over the arrangement before handing it off to their lawyers to iron out particulars of the deal. Besides the monetary and regulatory issues, both sides need to figure out what happens to customers and pipes that are added to the lines under Matthews' management.
Orange Beach has its own plans for a new facility capable of treating up to 10 million gallons of sewage each day, up from the 5.5 million gallons the city's Canal Road plant can handle each day.
Though the money for that $20 million project was obtained through a 2006 bond issue, construction has been delayed more than 18 months because the federal government has taken issue with a land swap between Orange Beach and the state that would provide the city with the 40 acres required for the new plant.
Blalock said that federal regulators in Atlanta are working with Alabama to clear up paperwork that will enable the property swap and said that a resolution could come this week, but city officials are considering alternative sites.
In the meantime, the city will not promise sewer service to any developers for up to 180 days.
Projects in the pipeline at City Hall won't be effected by the moratorium and neither will those wishing to build single-family homes, Moon said.
They need capacity and we need relief. It really works out well in the short term.-- City Administrator Jeff Moon
Amid delays in new plant construction, Orange Beach negotiating lease of lines north of waterway
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
By RYAN DEZEMBERStaff Reporter
ORANGE BEACH -- With its plans for a new sewage-treatment plant in limbo, the City Council on Monday voted unanimously to put a hold on promises of wastewater service to developers.
In addition, the council began negotiations to lease municipal sewerage north of the Intracoastal Waterway to a private company that is building a treatment plant north of Lillian.
Besides saving Orange Beach money in servicing lines well outside the city's limits and relieving some pressure on the aging municipal system, it would give Alabama Utility Services LLC's burgeoning Blackwater Wastewater Treatment Facility an initial customer base to build from, city officials said.
"They need capacity and we need relief," City Administrator Jeff Moon said. "It really works out well in the short term."
Most of the details in the lease agreement have yet to be worked out, but both sides are considering a three-year deal in which Pell City-based Alabama Utility Services would take control of all of Orange Beach's lines north of the Intracoastal Waterway, excluding customers along the Foley Beach Express.
Though the private company would collect money from customers on those lines, be responsible for repairs and have the ability to add customers and extend the lines, the city would still own the sewerage and would have control over how much the company charges customers, city officials said.
Orange Beach bills 817 customers in the area that the company would take over. Like those living within the city, residential sewer customers there pay $20 a month.
Mayor Pete Blalock said that because of the cost of maintaining lines outside the city limits, Orange Beach will probably have to slightly raise rates for outlying customers even if the lease is not approved.
Alabama Utility Services owner Chris Matthews said that the rate he seeks will have a lot to do with how much the city charges in the lease agreement, but that, "Our rates are going to be in that $30 to $40 window."
City officials said they'd probably seek $5 per customer per month from the company. That would net Orange Beach about $49,000 annually.
Orange Beach obtained the lines, which extend in places into Elberta and Foley, when the city cobbled together its municipal sewer system by buying multiple private concerns.
Blalock said that the council will insist on strict controls over the rates Matthews can charge from the onset and may force him to get the council's approval for any hike in excess of annual changes to the consumer price index, a common gauge of inflation.
On Monday, Matthews and his lawyers, which include former Baldwin County District Attorney and current Gulf Shores City Attorney David Whetstone, met with Orange Beach officials for about 1½ hours to go over the arrangement before handing it off to their lawyers to iron out particulars of the deal. Besides the monetary and regulatory issues, both sides need to figure out what happens to customers and pipes that are added to the lines under Matthews' management.
Orange Beach has its own plans for a new facility capable of treating up to 10 million gallons of sewage each day, up from the 5.5 million gallons the city's Canal Road plant can handle each day.
Though the money for that $20 million project was obtained through a 2006 bond issue, construction has been delayed more than 18 months because the federal government has taken issue with a land swap between Orange Beach and the state that would provide the city with the 40 acres required for the new plant.
Blalock said that federal regulators in Atlanta are working with Alabama to clear up paperwork that will enable the property swap and said that a resolution could come this week, but city officials are considering alternative sites.
In the meantime, the city will not promise sewer service to any developers for up to 180 days.
Projects in the pipeline at City Hall won't be effected by the moratorium and neither will those wishing to build single-family homes, Moon said.
They need capacity and we need relief. It really works out well in the short term.-- City Administrator Jeff Moon
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