"Albemarle County will pay for and claim all the new capacity gained by the 1999 expansion of the South Rivanna Water Treatment Plant as part of a new agreement between the county and the City of Charlottesville.

With the City Council and county service authority already signed off on the plan, the joint Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority had but to accept the agreement on Monday for it to take effect and close the chapter on this particular sore spot in city-county relations.

The urban water supply - which serves both the city and the county's growth area or "urban ring" - expanded by 4 million gallons per day with the completion of the $7.9 million project.

About $2.7 million of the project was for capacity expansion alone, the rest for improved operational expenses. Up through this agreement, both portions of the project were paid using the same formula.

Under the new agreement, the county service authority will reimburse the city for the debt service it has already paid on the $2.7 million and the county will take up 100 percent of the rest of the debt service payments on that portion of the project.

Using similar logic, the parties also agreed to divide the cost of increasing the safe yield provided by Rivanna through the expansion of the South Rivanna Reservoir.

William Brent, executive director of the Albemarle County Service Authority, applauded Judy Mueller, public works director for Charlottesville, on her role in completing the agreement. Brent said he and Mueller had been working on the agreement for about a year.

"This could have been a dog fight but it wasn't," Brent said, praising his colleague.

Mueller replied, "That goes both ways."

Robert Huff, an accountant attending to report on the annual financial audit, said it was a great accomplishment, putting the agreement together. It will only add to the authority's financial stability, he said.

And apparently, though copies of the financial report were not available at press time, Rivanna's total assets climbed by $1.9 million in 2003, thanks -to an. active capital improvement campaign and a decidedly drought-less summer.

Huff said that the lesson learned during the drought of 2002 should be that there is a need to financially prepare for water shortages in order to ensure continued smooth operations of the utility." (Ron Hasson, Observer, December 17, 2004)