Central New York village will see water rates skyrocket thanks to Wells College closure
AURORA, N.Y. — The closure of Wells College in 2024 presented immediate, obvious problems for the Finger Lakes community it called home for 156 years; without that anchor, the Village of Aurora would lose out the students and their families spending money locally.
What may not have been as clear was that neighbors are now about to see their local taxes skyrocket to ensure they still have access to safe drinking water. That’s because for decades, Wells College operated the water treatment plant. The facility was originally built to service its students; as the village population grew, local government purchased water from the college to provide residents. When Wells closed, Village Mayor Jim Orman said they had to work quickly to take on the operating costs of the plant.
“New York State told me that there’s no template for this,” Orman said, “they don’t know of any other situation like this in the state. So, we’re all learning as we go along. And we’re learning it’s going to be expensive.”
Orman said that the biggest expense is ensuring the right people are on the job. The village needed to hire the certified operators that were previously employed by Wells, accounting for the majority of the unexpected $300,000 annual cost of the plant. It means the village needs to increase it’s budget by about 27 percent, going from a planned $1.1 million to about $1.4 million for next year. Orman said that while his team is still crunching the numbers, neighbors can expect water rates to double or even triple.
“There’s no way around an increase, what that increase will be right now, we don’t know for sure. it will be significant,” Orman said, “especially in a smaller village, there’s just x amount of tax payers and it’s not many.”
The population of Aurora is about 292, according to Orman, and that includes Aurora Water Plant Senior Operator Bob Yager. He said that the change for his staff was smooth and neighbors will have noticed no difference in service; but he knows the transition for village government has been less than ideal.
“We try to minimize the cost anywhere we can to help out, we’re all part of this. We all live here,” Yager said.
Yager and his team are in charge of pumping on average about 55,000 gallons of water per day from Cayuga Lake and into people’s homes. It’s a critical service that they can’t do without; Orman said that he does not anticipate any help from New York State, but he has been on the phone with the Department of Health to try to work through the issue.
Orman said that he will look to host meetings with neighbors in the coming weeks to discuss the issue ahead of finalizing a budget, which he expects should come towards the end of April.