Homewood Looks To Chicago Heights For Water Service

HOMEWOOD, IL — Homewood officials are looking to cut ties with the City of Harvey and may turn to Chicago Heights to supply the village's drinking water instead.

The move comes as Harvey proposed hiking the rate it charges to supply Homewood with water nearly 24 percent to $5.57 from $4.51 for every 1,000 gallons. Village officials said they believe that they can stabilize prices or decrease them by buying water from the City of Chicago Heights instead.

Harvey is sharply increasing its fees because it is under a court order to pay off debt to the City of Chicago. Harvey buys water from Chicago for its residents and sells the surplus to nearby municipalities. However, in 2017, a Cook County judge declared that Harvey failed to pay Chicago more than $26 million for water and appointed a receiver to control the city's water fund. The receiver is recommending across-the-board rate increases to pay off Harvey's debt and make its water fund viable.

Chicago Heights officials first approached Homewood to make the switch about one year ago, said Village Manager Jim Marino. Chicago Heights buys its water from the City of Hammond in Indiana and also resells its surplus. Chicago Heights said it could provide Homewood water at $4.05 per 1,000 gallons. Prices would rise according to the Consumer Price Index, or a measure that examines the weighted average of prices of a basket of consumer goods and services, a memo from Marino to trustees showed.

However, Homewood would first have to build a pipeline that connected to the Chicago Heights system in the villages of Thornton or Glenwood near Gallagher Asphalt on Indiana Avenue. That could cost as much as $8 million and take three years to build. Marino said the village had the funds to cover the costs.

Whether residents would pay lower water bills if the deal is approved is not clear, he added.

"Overall, the village will be paying less money so there could be savings to residents," Marino said.

Village officials also considered purchasing water from the Village of Oak Lawn, or joining a water agency that villages of South Holland, East Hazel Crest and Thornton have created to purchase Harvey's water operations. Both were ruled out.

Oak Lawn was nixed because the option is too expensive. The village would charge Homewood about $6.66 per 1,000 gallons of water, and building transmission lines for that water would cost about $27 million, Homewood's research showed. Talks with the agency were "informal," Marino's memo said, but it appeared that rates would hover around $4.25 for every 1,000 gallons of water. It is not clear why that option was eliminated.

Chicago Heights, however, "offers the lowest rate and is less costly to construct than the Oak Lawn option. While there would be no construction needed if we remained with Harvey, we would be subject to higher rates and an uncertainty of what future rate increases would be," Marino said in the memo.

Marino said it was not clear when negotiations would be complete.