Council debates interconnect study as option to speed Kings Point tower rehab; cost concerns prevail

City staff presented a proposed task order on June 16 to analyze interconnects with neighboring St. Bonnie that could allow taking the Kings Point water tower offline for rehabilitation, but council members expressed concern about implementation costs and showed little appetite to accelerate the tower work.

Jasper, city staff, described the study as a system-modeling exercise that would simulate the system with Kings Point tower empty to determine whether one, two or three interconnect meters would be required to keep the system supplied during a multi-month outage. "That study will tell us if we need one, two, or three interconnect locations in order to supply our system," Jasper said.

Jasper said the modeling phase would cost about $14,700. Council members then discussed potential construction costs if new interconnects were required: staff estimated roughly $125,000–$150,000 per interconnect, and up to about $400,000 if all three were needed. One council member noted the city had previously installed an interconnect at lower cost as a change order but with limited engineering documentation.

Several council members questioned whether those sums are justified to accelerate what they described as an essentially aesthetic rehabilitation of the Kings Point tower. "If the 150 is too much, then I think we just don't do anything," one council member said, summarizing the majority view. Staff acknowledged that if future projects were already planned in the same corridors, it might be prudent to add connections at that time rather than incur standalone costs now.

Outcome and next steps: council provided feedback but did not authorize full interconnect construction during the June 16 meeting. Staff said they would take council direction into account and return with recommendations or pursue work only when adjacent projects make doing so more efficient.