FLINT, MI -- The city of Detroit is offering Flint the opportunity to never worry about the difficulties of treating Flint River water again.
Detroit Water and Sewerage Department Director Sue F. McCormick said in a Feb. 19 letter that she is "open to exploring a long-term contractual arrangement in which DWSD provides full service to Flint (and Genesee County) until such time as (the Karegnondi Water Authority pipeline) is operational, and a back-up service arrangement thereafter."
McCormick's offer came in a letter to Flint City Council President Josh Freeman and was also sent to emergency manager Jerry Ambrose and Mayor Dayne Walling.
MLive-The Flint Journal could not reach Walling or Ambrose for comment Wednesday, Feb. 25. Freeman said he would have no interest in negotiating a deal for a back-up water supply from Detroit.
While some back-up plan is needed, it might not be used for many decades with a new pipeline and pumping stations pushing KWA-supplied water here.
"I'm not interested in a long-term agreement. I don't need to pay" for backup because the river is the city's backup water supply, Freeman said. "I don't think the city and the residents can afford that."
McCormick's latest offer comes one month after she traveled to Flint and offered to provide emergency water here without a long-term contract between the two cities.
Flint had purchased Lake Huron water from Detroit for about 50 years -- an arrangement that ended in April when the city began using the Flint River as its source of water.
The city is expected to continue using Flint River water until the KWA pipeline is put into service in 2016. In the 10 months since the switch, Flint officials have struggled to perfect treatment and distribution of the river water.
The city issued boil water advisories in scattered areas as a precaution against bacteria in water and notified customers last month that it was in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act because of high levels of total trihalomethanes (TTHM).
Genesee County has continued to purchase its water from DWSD at a premium in the short-term because it has no long-term contract.
Flint officials have said they plan to use the Flint River as an emergency-only water source once the city is connected to the KWA pipeline, which the city and Genesee County are partnering to build.
County Drain Commissioner Jeff Wright said representatives of his office have been negotiating with DWSD for months about the possibility of Detroit providing back-up water supply to the county in the future.
No deal has been reached, and Wright said the county has the option of building its own back-up supply -- in the form of a giant, 130-million-gallon reservoir -- at the site of its planned water treatment plant near Stanley and Marathon roads, near the Genesee-Lapeer County border.
A contract to construct such a reservoir could be open to bidding in coming weeks, the drain commissioner said.