Reporting Public Policy

A Reporting Project of the Kent State University School of Media and Journalism

City of KentCouncilFall 2022 StoriesUncategorized

The Issue with Water in the City of Kent

Ryan Struhar

On November 16th, 2022 the city of Kent held their council meeting. The night started with a 6:30 call to order where the issue of the city’s problem with water came up often

Over the past few months the city of Kent has had problems with their water. Water towers often going offline and or being expedited. The Riverside Court water main being one that has been expedited. The construction will cost $100K. The construction on the matter was started in October, 2022 and the construction will end in November, 2022.

The issues with the water being expedited is that of minimal flow to houses and the in house design.

“Over the years we have had a lot of issues with our capital fund in the water department, and it has been difficult has been difficult to attract grant,” said Heidi L. Shaffer who is  a ward five council member. She went on to say that it hard to replace water digesters which is for the water treatment. The city of Kent deals with a lot of poverty, and it is a city that has many low income families, and it is also an older city than most.

Shaffer went onto say that this year they had a water tower fail, which is something that is not uncommon for an older city like Kent, the city of Kent has also seen a lot of water line breaks, she said that this is not unusual for an older city like Kent. It is has been a delayed issue however, when it came to making repairs.

“A number of years ago we had a rate increase and that was partially to offset some of the capital improvements that we needed,” Shaffer said. The city of Kent was able to get some ARPA funding to do some of the most expensive treatments for the water facility, and that would helps out the city a lot Shaffer explained.

The water tower failure was something that was hard to explain, there was a water line issue. There was multiple things that had to go wrong, and Shaffer said that what happened is that it started leak. Water coming out and it had to be drained. Shaffer said that it took a long time for it to be repaired and that is because of supply problems that were going on in the city.

“There is always unexpected thing that come up when we are talking about water,” Shaffer said. There are many departments within the city’s water department itself.

The city of Kent is having an issue with inflation, part of the reason why there has been problems fixing the water is due to the costs and inflation. The rates are running higher and that is all because of inflation, Shaffer said. They are looking at being in the red next year, and they want to offset that. They have a deficit coming and the council is looking to prevent that, so what they may need to do is raise water rates by 9%.

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