Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Water Infrastructure topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Girl Scouts seek Hudson connection to SR‑303 water main as on‑camp well falters; consultants cite $1M estimate
Summary
Girl Scouts of Northeast Ohio asked council to consider allowing a service connection from State Route 303 to their camp near Peninsula after prolonged well declines. Consultants recommended an 8‑inch service for fire protection and estimated initial work and fundraising needs at about $1 million, with six months of further due diligence before design.
Representatives for Girl Scouts of Northeast Ohio and their consultants outlined a proposal on Sept. 9 to connect the organization's camp (near the Hudson‑Peninsula area off SR‑303) to Hudson's water main to address an aging and increasingly unreliable well.
Bob McNutt, the project's consultant, said the camp's 80‑year‑old well has declined in capacity and that during drought conditions last summer the camp's output dropped significantly. He said the Girl Scouts have explored wells and alternate supplies and have engaged multiple consultants in recent years. "Late last summer ... the EPA even gave me a call and was chatting with me and said, 'Hey, we have been trying to help the Girl Scouts find water anywhere, any way we could,'" McNutt said.
Consultants described typical day‑to‑day demand near 9,000–12,000 gallons and peak instances that can approach 20,000 gallons, translating roughly into a sustained flow need of about 14 gallons per minute historically and a design consideration in the 14–50 gpm range for non‑fire needs. For fire protection, they said, the standard fire‑flow design target would be roughly 500 gpm; achieving that protection would require an 8‑inch service line and additional infrastructure at the camp.
Engineering staff said Hudson's current plant capacity is about 2,000,000 gallons per day with average usage near 1,000,000 gpd, leaving reserve capacity but cautioning that the city cannot lose multiple wells without operational adjustments. Consultants said the city side of SR‑303 already has an 8‑inch main; the project would be primarily a service connection and on‑camp distribution. Initial engineering estimates for the full solution, including the on‑camp improvements to accommodate fire protection, were discussed in the range of approximately $1,000,000, subject to geotechnical constraints and fundraising.
Councilors pressed about who would pay operating and capital costs and whether the Girl Scouts would face the city's 'outside' customer surcharge; staff replied the Girl Scouts would pay local rates plus the outside customer surcharge (about 1.5x), consistent with how outside users are billed. McNutt said the project team is working with partners—Boy Scouts and Cuyahoga Valley National Park have offered letters of support—and will pursue state and federal grant opportunities, but they do not expect to proceed to full design without council and staff concurrence.
Council took no formal vote; members said they would take the report under consideration and directed staff to examine capacity and billing details and to bring the topic back if further action is warranted.
