Residents who live near the primary water source for Bullock Pen Water District in Boone and Grant counties are worried a proposed $20 million treatment plant could negatively impact the region – and their properties.
“If you think about shrinking the lake down and pulling the sides in, all of our docks that we launch our kayaks from or go fishing from, they’ll be no more,” said Michelle Ballard, expressing the fears that others who live around Bullock Pen Lake, the primary water source for the district, have felt over the last few weeks. “I mean, we will not be able to actually access the water because it will just be a mud pit.”
Paul Harp, the water district’s superintendent, told LINK nky the new plant is one of two options the district could pursue as the current plant, which was built in the 1960s, strains under the effects of age and usage demand. The other option would be to buy water wholesale from neighboring water districts, such as the Boone-Florence Water Commission. That option, Harp said, would require the construction of a new 12″ pipe from Boone County to transport the water.
Harp admitted that building a new plant would cost more upfront — about $20 million. The upfront cost for building infrastructure to purchase the water instead would be cheaper, between $18.5 million and $19 million, according to statements from Harp and Bullock Pen Water District Commission Chair Chuck Givin. Yet, Harp said the purchase model would cost more money long-term.
The water district projects that maintaining a new plant would cost about $230,832 a month, whereas going with a purchase model would cost $271,831 a month.
“The month by month cost is more expensive to purchase that water,” Harp told LINK nky. “When you’re including your loan payment to pay for the project and the water itself, it is more expensive to go with full purchase, as opposed to produce.”
The state names six different water districts who sell to Bullock Pen, including the Northern Kentucky Water District and Boone County Water & Sewer District, which itself buys from the Boone-Florence Water Commission. The wholesale rates for each seller, as well as the rate from Cincinnati Waterworks as a comparison, are displayed in the chart below.
LINK nky is still in the process of retrieving rate information from several sellers. We will update the information as it becomes available.
The project has been in the works for about four years, and the water district has to get permission from the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Kentucky Division of Water and, finally, the Public Service Commission before it can proceed with building the plant and drawing more water from the lake.
Currently the district draws about 500,000 gallons of water from the lake a day. Both Harp and the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife put the maximum withdraw rate for the a new plant at 1.5 million gallons a day. Harp emphasized that this would be the upper limit of what they would withdraw and argued that it would likely not be necessary to withdraw that amount on a regular basis.
“We had hoped that this project will be done in 2027, and then we’re going to need to withdraw about 1 million gallons a day,” Harp said. “Obviously, that number will grow based on how much water people need or growth within the community.”
Harp projected that 2047 would be the year that the district would need to draw the 1.5 million gallons, and even then, it would be capped by the state. He sent LINK nky some withdrawal projections based on different rates of water usage growth.
Kentucky Sen. Gex Williams, a Republican from Verona whose district includes parts of several counties, has emerged as a proponent of the purchase model and has been advocating for it among residents. Williams viewed the purchase option – and the more modern infrastructure it would entail – as a more efficient regional alternative than having individual treatment plants at every water district.
“One of the things that I always talked about Northern Kentucky was common services,” Williams said. “The rest of the state, everybody had their little pipelines. And we don’t combine governments, but we combine services. We work together across water, sewer infrastructure, roads; that is what we do. That’s what I’m about, water, sewer infrastructure, roads, public protection, fire protection.”
Williams, Ballard and others also worried about the effects of increased water withdrawal on the lake’s ecosystem, especially the fish, which tend to spawn in the shallow areas of the lake and in the shallower creeks feeding into it.
“The shorelines is where all the fish spawn, as we [residents] know, because we see it,” Ballard said. “And so all of that will die down. So then, the blue heron and the green heron, all of those that feed off off of that, they’re gonna be flying away to find someplace else. So, like, all the wildlife will go away.”
Lower lake levels, other residents worried, might force them to extend out their private docks should they prove inadequate to the changing water levels. Williams also expressed that newer pipe infrastructure could be used to expand fire fighting infrastructure, arguing that the area’s current 6″ and 8″ pipes couldn’t handle the pressure demands of modern fire pumpers.
All of this came to head on Monday at the meeting of the water commission in Crittenden. People, including the senator, packed into the commission’s tiny conference room to share their concerns and ask questions. It was crowded, and Chair Givin at one point even tried to adjourn the meeting for fear that the building would run afoul of fire codes with so many people. Several attendees willingly gave up their seats, however, and the meeting continued.
Many residents felt they’d been kept out of the loop having only heard about the new plant recently, and tensions were high at the start of the meeting. One man even stormed out of meeting in frustration, but things eased up as the meeting progressed and the commissioners fielded questions.
Rodger Bingham, the commissioner representing Grant County, said, “I think that some of the information that’s been put out there has just been completely wrong.”
The commissioners insisted they had no ill-intentions with the plant and that much of what they could do was, in fact, constrained by legal agreements with state agencies.
“It’s not like this board has intentions,” said Commission Boone County Representative Bill Wethington. “We have agreements that are legal agreements that we’re being allowed to draw so much, and that’s all under the control of the Department of Fish and Wildlife. If they feel that we’re not living up to it, they’ll pull that permit.”
Things gradually calmed down as the meeting went on, conversations became more civil. Still, some felt the board had done a poor job of communicating with the public.
“I think one punch line to this story, though, is the board needs to work much harder in communicating with us,” said one resident Ron Williams. “You [the commissioners] may feel like you’re doing it enough. We’re telling you, not from our perspective.”
“We want to keep producing water, and if the lake is is dry, then that will do us no good,” Harp told LINK nky. “The other part of that is that we want to be good members of the community and be trusted and all those types of things. I mean, on a personal level, I’ve lived here my entire life, lived and worked here my entire life, so I certainly care about the community that I’m from and live in and work in, too.”
The Department of Fish and Wildlife will host a public meeting on the project on Tuesday, July 15 at 6:30 p.m. at the Grant County Public Library in Williamstown, where members of the public can come out and learn more specifics of the project from the department’s engineers.