Indian Meadow Water Company increasing water bill for Sisters residents
Cami Porter
SISTERS, Ore. –(KTVZ)– A water company in Sisters is adding an extra $100 a month to customers’ bills, and it’s not sitting well with some residents. Indian Meadow Water Company is a volunteer owned company serving several subdivisions in Sisters.
The system it inherited is decades old, with crumbling infrastructure and 50 year old asbestos lined pipes. The company has hired an engineer to estimate estimate the cost of repairs, but even before that report is complete, customers are already seeing an extra $100 a month on their water bills, and some are not happy about it.
Steven Huillet, a Sisters resident told KTVZ news ” They are preempting even though because they have no idea what it’s going to cost, but they’re already deciding what this assessment’s going to be. And they have not and will not put an end of when the assessment will end.”
Terry Buchholz, from the Indian Meadow Water Company told KTVZ news “We have been very proactive in trying to figure out how to fund this, and we just have to, I hate to say pull off the band-aid, but we need the funding in order to move forward. The pipes continue to break at a more frequent basis, and we need to move forward.”
Both the company and the neighbors complaining about the increase agree on one thing. 90% of the pipes need to be replaced. Failures have already caused several outages and boil orders. Neighbors want the company to find grants to pay for the repairs. The company says it’s tried and continues to look for them. Neighbors also suggested the private water companies sell to a larger company.
Indian Meadow Water Company says the amount of required maintenance would discourage another company from buying it. On top of that, the asbestos-laced pipes are a liability and make buying the company unappealing.