From Staff Reports

Asheville City Attorney Bob Long, who addressed the legal history of the Asheville Water System, told the Council of Independence Business Ownerson on Feb. 3 that many people have formed strong opinions on who should own the Asheville water system, depending on which version of “history” they have heard.

“The history is unique,” compared to that of other water systems in the state, he asserted.

“Whoever (originally surveyed and) went over to the north fork of the Swannanoa River in Black Mountain was laying off 16,000 to 20,000 acres” for the water system. “It was quite a job.”

Long said the Asheville water system is comprised of the Burnette Reservoir, the Bee Tree Reservoir and the Mills River Water Treatment Facility, the latter of which is located near the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers.

In speaking of the purpose of an easement, he said, “You’ve got a dedicated piece of property that’s going to stay the way it is.” From his research, Long said it appears that “the water customers paid for the system.”

He said Sullivan Acts II and III, enacted by the state legislature in 2005, required that Asheville as well as Buncombe and Henderson counties’ water rates must be the same systemwide — and that the money made in the water system had to be kept in the system, except that which was needed to pay off indebtedness. The acts were justified by the legislators, based on the contention that Asheville had not paid for the water lines outside the city limits.

He said the water systems around Asheville had “floated their own bonds ... Most of those systems are now within the City of Asheville water system.”

As for Candler, Long said, “The first round of the legislation in 1955” focused “on whether it was constitutional for the legislature to require rates to be equal.”

“The city only served to pump water into the system, read the meters and bill the customers,” he noted. “The court concluded that these same factual underpinnings continued to exist in 2005 — except that at an even greater” rate differential.

“I’m not here to advocate what’s to be done with the system.” However, he said after the passage of the Sullivan Acts, “this is like a restart — all of the customers are paying for it equally ... The people outside of the city have actually paid for their portion of the sytem and the question is — should they have higher rates,” Long concluded.