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Progress continues to be made to improve the Buena Vista Public Service Authority’s finances in advance of undertaking a major upgrade to the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
Refinancing of two loans through the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development agency has been approved so that debt payments will be substantially lowered. New funding of $5.424 million has been approved so that earlier loans with much higher interest rates can be repaid.
Debt of $2.5 million on a 2004 loan for water line upgrades is being paid off, as is the remaining debt of $2.2 million on a 2011 loan to pay for a filtration plant for the Dickinson well. Buena Vista city officials have estimated previously that the refinancing is to reduce the PSA’s debt payments by about $300,000 annually.
One of the conditions of the new USDA loan is that the PSA acquire all of the city’s water and sewer facility assets. Transfers of those assets from the city to the PSA have taken place.
The new USDA loan has a 40-year payback period and a 2.75 percent interest rate. At the direction of the USDA, the PSA recently raised its sewer rate by 50 cents per 1,000 gallons, from $8.54 to $9.04. The water rate was left at $8.58 per 1,000 gallons. -In an unrelated move, but one that will further shore up the PSA’s finances, the PSA last week entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Blue Ridge Resource Authority to accept leachate from the BRRA landfill to be treated at the PSA’s wastewater treatment plant.
Up until now, all of the BRRA landfill’s leachate has been going to the Maury Service Authority’s regional wastewater treatment plant.
The Buena Vista PSA agreed to accept leachate from the BRRA at a rate of $18 per 1,000 gallons. Under terms of the new agreement, the PSA will be taking about half of the six to seven truckloads of leachate that’s generated at the BRRA landfill each week. The remainder of the leachate will continue going to the MSA’s treatment plant.
The PSA, composed of members of Buena Vista City Council, approved the MOA this past Thursday prior to City Council’s regular meeting. The action provides additional revenue for the PSA and treatment of the leachate is expected to improve the plant’s biological processes.
