Residents of Westbury Village, an expansive manufactured home park in Colchester, are seeking a more affordable water rate from the Champlain Water District.
It’s a matter of equity, said Gayle Pezzo, a village resident, who serves as president of the board of the co-op, which owns the park’s assets and infrastructure, and was recently elected as a state representative.
“Westbury is not asking for any handouts. We are asking that our municipality be treated the same as all other municipalities that they serve,” she said.
When the 250-unit resident-owned community incorporated as a village last year one of its goals was to negotiate lower water costs. But the water district, which charges Westbury its retail water rate, is reluctant to provide water at the wholesale rate.
The Champlain Water District offers the lower wholesale rate to nine municipal clients across Vermont — three cities, five towns, and one village — who in turn charge a retail rate to customers. Colchester is the only municipality that is charged the higher retail rate, because the water systems there are owned and operated by the water district — not the town.
At its monthly meeting on Dec.17, Joe Duncan, general manager of the water district, said its policy, updated in June, is to provide wholesale water only to large town and city-owned distribution systems.
“CWD does not provide the wholesale water rate to firms and corporations, whether private, public or municipal, within the town or city-owned water distribution systems,” he said in an email.
Westbury’s water system is similar in size to about 95% of the public water systems in Vermont and its population is larger than roughly 50 towns in Vermont, Libby Payne, Westbury Village’s clerk, said during a presentation to the water district’s board of commissioners Tuesday.
“Communities must have the ability to modernize their water infrastructure, much of which is approaching or past its useful life,” she said. “We believe that the village shares your goals and values to protect the water supply and the delivery systems.”
The village effort
The community, originally known as Westbury Park, was created by a couple as a private, for-profit manufactured home park in 1972. A new owner put it up for sale in 2018. Residents, utilizing a Vermont statute designed to protect manufactured home parks, rallied to create a housing co-op as a “limited equity cooperative” and organized to buy the park. The goal was to preserve their low- and moderate-income housing and keep developers at bay.
With management becoming more complex amid rising maintenance costs, the working class residents in Westbury then organized last year to incorporate as a municipal village. The goal, said Pezzo, was to lower costs by gaining access to state funding available to municipalities, to secure a lower water rate and be able to negotiate with other communities for maintenance of road, wastewater and drinking water systems.
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The town of Colchester opposed Westbury’s effort to become a village and questioned if residents would actually save money. The town has also declined to manage services and infrastructure — like the privately owned roads — in the community of about 500 residents spread over 183 acres in and around Coventry Road.
The Westbury co-op, which is responsible for maintaining the park’s roads and utilities, still owns the water service system, but it’s in the final stage of transferring ownership to the new municipal village. Residents hope doing so will help them secure the municipal water rate from the water district.
Currently, the co-op owns, manages and maintains the water distribution system and more than seven miles of pipe. It pays about $95,000 annually for water service; according to Pezzo, the wholesale rate would save them about $50,000 per year. Residents pay a lot fee of $535 to cover water and other expenses — the highest lot fee in the state.
A relic of the past
For nearly 50 years, the Champlain Water District provided water to the manufactured home park as a customer of Colchester Fire District 3. The district currently charges residents there the retail rate of $55 per quarter for the first 7,000 gallons plus $6.36 for every additional 1,000 gallons, according to officials from the water district.
But the fire district was dissolved in 2022 and its assets and liabilities in and beyond Westbury Village were transferred to the community co-op. Champlain Water District stepped in to own, manage and maintain the rest of the infrastructure in the geographic area that the former fire district served.
Westbury Village residents on Tuesday advocated for the water district’s wholesale rate of $2.87 per 1,000 gallons at its monthly meeting in South Burlington. The village could then charge residents the retail rate and use the difference to maintain and upgrade infrastructure — the formula used by all other municipalities supplied by the water district.
Duncan, from the water district, is concerned that offering the cheaper rate would create a precedent and encourage smaller, localized water systems to break off from town or city-owned retail systems in order to purchase wholesale water from the district.
He said offering the wholesale rate to Westbury Village is “inconsistent” with the water district’s desire to shift ownership of the water system in Colchester to the town. Doing so “is not a sustainable model” for the district, he said.
Ralph Perkins, a Colchester resident who addressed queries at the meeting, said Westbury’s situation is uncommon because it is a relic of how things used to be. But times have changed. Further, Fire District 3 was considered a municipality and was charged the district’s municipal rate before it was dissolved, he said.
A unique situation
Colchester is the only entity served by the Champlain Water District that does not own or run a municipal water system. Instead, the town of about 17,500 has four individual municipal water systems that are owned and operated by the water district as separate enterprises and are charged the higher retail rate.
That’s because of its rural and seasonal farming beginnings, Town Manager Aaron Frank wrote in an email. As parts of the town developed, those areas created independent fire districts for the purpose of providing water services.
Champlain Water District was created in 1971 and has long owned and operated some of the town’s six water systems — the Colchester Town Water System, Malletts Bay Water Company, Colchester Fire District 1 and Colchester Fire District 3. The Westbury manufactured home park has historically been a part of and served by Fire District 3.
When the town of Colchester declined to manage the water districts, Duncan said Champlain Water District stepped in to make sure water service continued. But the district never intended to own or operate water systems and would rather work with local entities that do.
To that end, Champlain Water District is working to consolidate the four systems into one and hopes to transfer ownership to the town. “We are actively working with the Town and we hope that transfer can occur in the next few years,” he said in an email.
Frank said the Colchester selectboard is open to that, but the process is complex and would likely take several years to sort out.
Meanwhile, Westbury Village residents maintain they are paying the retail cost without the advantage of the maintenance support that other communities paying retail have. The co-op and the residents together contribute about $300,000 annually in taxes to the town, according to Pezzo. They are worried about aging infrastructure and future maintenance costs. An online petition seeking support for the Champlain Water District to reassess their share of the cost has harnessed 130 signatures.
Residents of the manufactured home park, who said they have long felt overlooked, outlined their concerns in a video that was part of the package delivered to the commissioners this week. In that video, Erhard Mahnke of Burlington, a longtime advocate of affordable housing, called the effort by Westbury to secure a municipal water rate “a matter of environmental and economic justice.”
At the Dec. 17 meeting, a dozen residents attended the hour-long discussion about the feasibility of the wholesale rate proposal, on the water supply ownership and history of what has happened in the past. No vote was taken and Duncan said he expects the discussion will continue at future meetings.
“Although we seem to have the same respects and concerns for providing clean water, it appears Westbury Village continues to be overlooked as part of the larger conversation,” Perkins said in an email. “Hopefully, coming out of this meeting we can continue the dialogue for fair and equitable water rates for the Village of Westbury.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Westbury Village residents seek ‘fair and equitable water rates’ from Champlain Water District.