Town of Mocksville/Davie County

In 2020 Raftelis was engaged to perform a feasibility analysis of a regional water supply solution for Davie County, NC (County) and the Town of Mocksville (Town). The County currently owns and operates two water treatment plants, the Cooleemee and Sparks Road water treatment plants, that serve approximately 12,500 water customers thought out the county. The Town owns the Lagle water treatment plant that is operated by an outside contractor, and which serves approximately 2,500 customers.  Both the County and the Town’s water treatment plants are in need of replacement or significant repair to meet the future needs of their respective service areas. Given the proximity of the water systems and service areas, a study was conducted by Hazen and Sawyer (Hazen) several years ago to evaluate the feasibility of regional water supply solutions. The study was subsequently updated by Hazen and documented in the professional engineer’s report (PER) prepared by Hazen dated June 2020.    Raftelis was engaged by Hazen to perform the financial analysis associated with the PER to achieve several objectives:

• Develop financial plans for Mocksville’s water and sewer system to ensure financial sufficiency, meet operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, ensure sufficient funding for capital replacement and refurbishment (R&R) needs, and improve the financial health of the enterprises. This task allowed Mocksville to understand the customer impacts of rehabilitating its existing water treatment plant or undertaking a regional approach with Davie County.
• Develop financial plans for Davie County to determine the impact on water rates and customer impacts under different water supply alternatives. This task utilized a rate and financial model previously built by Raftelis for Davie County to model the operating and capital costs of a stand alone or regional water supply solution.
• Provide input on cost sharing methods between the County and the Town for the operation and capital needs of the chosen water supply alternative. This task required calculating a wholesale rate to be charged by Davie County to the Town of Mocksville. This task also involved the identification of cost sharing and contract considerations under a wholesale agreement.

The analysis allowed both parties to identify the most viable regional solution that would achieve the lowest customer impact for both Davie and Mocksville water customers.