Editorial: Columbia must follow through on promise to stop raiding water fund

COLUMBIA’S WATER system has pipes that haven’t been replaced in more than a century. A canal that has been used for nearly that long supplies one of the city’s two water treatment plants, but its maintenance has been largely ignored — until the October floods ripped a 60-foot gash in its dike and left the capital city without potable water for days.

The repairs to the canal alone are likely to cost water customers at least $25 million, and that’s on top of routine maintenance that has not been performed routinely enough. Although the floods were extraordinary, they served as a crucial reminder to all of us of how vital our water system is — and how vulnerable.

The sewer system is even more precarious. The city is under federal order to make repairs that are expected to cost $750 million — or three times the annual operating budget for the entire city — and has started raising rates to cover the costs.

The bills have mounted at least in part because Columbia has not used water and sewer revenue to take care of the water and sewer system. Instead, it has siphoned out money to pay for everything from police to city festivals. From 1999 through 2010, $79 million was diverted to non-water-and-sewer expenditures, while the system deteriorated. Millions of dollars more have been diverted each year since then.

To its credit, the Columbia City Council in recent years started reducing its annual diversion, and last year it agreed to limit the transfers to 2 percent of water and sewer revenue. But in so doing, the council voted to dedicate that money — about $2.6 million this year — to public safety. That is, the council essentially enshrined what had been a bad habit into bad law.

But then we had an election, and the balance on the council tipped to critics of the diversions, and last month, the council voted to end the transfers and find some as-yet-unidentified other way to fund the police.

Of course, there’s a big difference between saying you’re going to stop the transfers, or even passing a resolution to stop, and actually doing it. A resolution can always be amended or rescinded — or even ignored, as the council has done with other resolutions.

So we’ll hold off on the confetti until the council actually passes a budget that does not rely on any water and sewer money.

But this is nonetheless an encouraging and welcome step toward responsibly managing the water and sewer system and the city’s budget, and we applaud it. We also applaud the fact that the council came to this decision unanimously (or as unanimously as you can when two members are absent). We’ve had too many 4-3 votes in recent years, so it’s extremely encouraging to see the council reach a consensus rather than breaking down into factions again.

We’ve never bought the idea that it is inherently wrong for the city to use profits from its water system to pay for city services. The taxpayers of Columbia backed the investments that created the system to serve much of the Midlands; they deserve a portion of the profit — if there is a profit. The problem is that Columbia has taken its “profit” before paying all the bills. When that happens, either water and sewer customers have to pay higher bills than they should have to pay or else this vital public utility is left to deteriorate or — as we have been seeing in Columbia — both.

We would be delighted for the day to come when the water and sewer system again becomes a minor money-maker for the city. But much repair and maintenance work must be done and many millions of dollars worth of bills must be paid before that can happen again.

The City Council’s unanimous vote to end the transfers is the first step in that direction. We look forward to many more steps.

This story was originally published March 1, 2016 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Editorial: Columbia must follow through on promise to stop raiding water fund."