CUMBERLAND — Allegany County officials might hire outside help to evaluate massive amounts of information that pertains to the takeover of a private water company.
The issue involves the county commissioners’ unanimous June vote to use eminent domain to take the Pinto Water and Wastewater and Highland Estates Water system owned by Maryland American Water, a subsidiary of American Water Works Co.
According to the company’s websites, “American Water (NYSE: AWK) is the largest regulated water and wastewater utility company in the United States,” and “Maryland American Water is the largest regulated water utility in the state, serving customers in Harford, Allegany and Anne Arundel counties.”
Earlier this year, Maryland American Water bought the system from Maryland Water.
The county said its move to take the water system aims to help customers with unusually high monthly water and sanitation bills.
The action requires Allegany County to pay the water company fair market value for the system.
Thursday, Allegany County Administrator Jason Bennett said the company gave him and county attorney T. Lee Beeman access to data related to the system’s value.
“There’s well in excess of 100 documents in there with thousands of pages of material,” Bennett said.
He said county staff in coming weeks will evaluate the information.
“This is not gonna go quick, unfortunately,” Bennett said.
“There’s a mountain of work here.”
He said the water company was responsive to the county’s request for the data.
“To their defense, they moved relatively quickly to get it together for us,” he said.
Beeman said the water company provided the county some information related to its recent purchase of the system.
“There’s some studies in there that were included,” he said.
“Some economic analysis … some structural analysis.”
Commissioner Bill Atkinson said additional resources might be required to evaluate the data.
“We may need to have somebody else look at that, that has more staffing and can help with reviewing all those documents,” he said.
“It’s gonna take some effort by somebody, and if we have to hire outside and it gets done quicker, that helps everybody.”
Bel Air resident Larry Smith, who has spoken at several county meetings to request help for the water customers, said some folks have left the area due to the high bills.
“Just this week, a family that (has) lived there for 39 years decided that they had to go to West Virginia,” he said.
“This is not, unfortunately, a unique thing that we’re seeing in these communities.”