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Cuts at U Lake

Posted on June 4, 2009 by Staff

This may be your last chance, Carrboro. As part of OWASA’s draft budget for the fiscal year 2009-10, it is planning to cut the number of days that we have access to University Lake from four days down to just two. This means that for five days of the week, the best you will get is a distant view of the lake through the chain link fence.

Here are the facts. The cost savings from halving the access is $16,000 per annum; that equates to 80 cents per customer per year (7 cents per month). To put this in perspective, the draft operating budget for OWASA is $18.7 million, and the $16,000 savings comes out to a barely calculable .00086 of the budget. And get this; OWASA claims the $16,000 as an operational cost savings. Don’t be fooled, this is a service take-away and just one more loss for the citizens of Carrboro and Chapel Hill.

We citizens were asked to reduce water usage and we responded diligently. We have been asked to pay substantial rate increases year after year. And by the way, the OWASA board at its public hearing last week said that we should expect rate increases every year approximating 10 percent. Now we should give up half our access to “our little jewel,” University Lake, for such miniscule savings that one thinks there must be an ulterior motive. Maybe they just don’t want us there.

I spoke against the reduction in access to University Lake at the May 28 hearing, and I was disappointed to find that I was the only one to express dissatisfaction. Maybe you all just missed this little item in the budget and you still want to do something about it. If so, send your email to the OWASA board at webmaster@owasa.org

Bruce Boehmke
Carrboro

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