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joint utility. However, individual savings will vary for each member city depending on how the joint utility is formed and how the joint utility costs are proportioned to each city. In Option 1, where a Joint Utility does not own and operate the distribution system, there may initially be more benefit to cities with older water systems that are near full development, as they would not need to share the new development costs of trunk mains in other cities. However, as cities with older water systems age and need repair this initial benefit would be offset by the fact that the larger Joint Utility would not help fund the repair and replacement of the aging distributions systems. Under Option 2 the Joint Utility would share increased maintenance costs associated with aging watermain. There should be more discussion between the member cities as to how the Joint Utility costs would be allocated to each city, and whether there would be buy -in costs to help make membership more equitable across the varied maturity of the member cities. 2.4 Overall Recommendations Detailed recommendations are discussed in Section 10.0; however, a summary of our recommendations is as follows: • Continue to investigate forming a Joint Utility under Option 2 • Plan for joint development now before the opportunity Is lost as each city builds out more Infrastructure that might not be needed in a Joint Utility setting • Investigate which cities should be in the Joint Utility, and consider removing Columbus due to geographic reasons • Negotiate initial buy -in for asset and capital sharing between cities • Refine cost estimates based on new comprehensive planning and other studies 2.5 Recommendations for Future Work As this study included only a high-level preliminary analysis, three subsequent studies are recommended to move the project forward. A detailed list of these studies is shown in Section 11 in the order in which they should occur. The studies Include: 1. Study 1 Water Quality Analysis. This study would quantify the impacts of mixing different qualities of water to help finalize the connect combination of cities for a joint utility. 2. Study 2 Facility Plan. This study would define in greater detail the physical facilities needed to create a Joint Utility. This would include the size of interconnecting watenmain, the location of new storage, and whether or not pressure zones would need to be managed with pump stations and pressure reducing valves. 3. Study 3 Financial and Governance Plan. This study would review the financial and organizational aspects of the Joint Utility to add more certainty to the final costs that each community would. see as a result of the formation of a Joint Utility. JdrH Water Utliky Feasibility Study 9 88