DuPage Water Commission looking outside county for new customers

The DuPage Water Commission is exploring the possibility of supplying Lake Michigan water to communities well beyond the county's borders.

Officials with the agency, which provides lake water to 26 DuPage towns and some unincorporated areas, say they've had "major discussions" with representatives for Yorkville, Oswego and Montgomery.

In addition, the commission last week had discussions with Joliet about bringing lake water to that city.

"The next step is bringing in new customers," Commission Chairman Jim Zay said during a presentation to the county board. "That's what we're working on now."

The news comes as work is roughly 80 percent done on a new pipeline that will carry lake water to Bartlett, which next year is expected to become the commission's sixth-largest customer.

"We're a water utility," Zay said, "and we're going to expand our services out to not only the rest of DuPage County, but the surrounding areas."

Officials say the possibility of adding customers is a sign of how far the commission has come since being rocked by a financial scandal more than eight years ago.

In late 2009, it was discovered the commission squandered its $69 million reserve fund through poor accounting practices and lackadaisical financial oversight.

After the board that oversees the commission was revamped, it implemented enhanced accounting policies, procedures, controls and oversight. It also adopted a rate schedule that addressed increases from Chicago for the purchase of water and other financial issues.

The agency also took steps to wean itself off a quarter-cent sales tax, which generated about $35 million of its annual revenue. The sales tax was eliminated in 2016.

To prepare for the loss of the tax, the agency paid off all its debts, including $70 million it borrowed in the months after the financial scandal to retire construction debt and restore its reserves.

"We've been debt-free since 2016, and we plan to stay that way going forward," Commission General Manager John Spatz Jr. said.

Spatz said adding new customers will allow the commission to sell more water, which helps it avoid increasing water rates.

He said Yorkville, Oswego and Montgomery are studying whether they could purchase lake water from the commission.

"We think it's very promising for us," Spatz said.

Joliet officials, meanwhile, reached out to the commission because the city's deep wells "are not sustainable" in the long term, Spatz said.

"They know that in the future they're going to have to come up with a different water source," he said, "so we're one of the ones they're looking at."