Greensboro Water Director claims we are headed for a disaster!

The Miami Herald did a story yesterday about the rising costs of repairing the water works infrastructure—a growing national problem. It interviewed Greensboro’s water chief Allan Williams because he was formerly Jacksonville Florida’s utility director. Several experts quoted in this story indicated that water rates need to rise 20 to 25 percent and Williams agrees.

 "People don't want to pay for this so they take it for granted,'' said Williams. “But by keeping rates artificially low, the effects are going to snowball and it's going to become a disaster.''

What the City of Greensboro is not telling you is that infrastructure costs are skyrocketing but water sales are lower than 15 years ago. Therefore, cash flow is a problem. But Greensboro cannot cite low water use as the problem because it predicted that water sales were going to increase and they didn't—they fell. Without the anticipated revenue from increased water use the only way to raise cash now is to raise the water rates.

Greensboro never needed the Randleman Dam. The money it wasted for it could have been applied to water works infrastructure repairs.