Ni America wishes to purchase Tryon’s water and wastewater treatment plants. Two years ago, they offered the town $4.2 million. Ni America is a private firm that runs water systems a lot like Tryon’s.
“We really specialize in smaller systems that need help,”[Ni America President Ed] Wallace said. “We also are in the process of talking to cities in which there are water and wastewater issues with increasing costs. We try to fix the issues less expensively than [the Town of Tryon] can fix it.”
Councilman George Baker wanted some assurance that Ni America wouldn’t jerk water users around. Wallace replied that Ni America ratepayers in South Carolina typically pay 40% less than consumers linked to municipal water systems. One reason he cited was that, unlike municipalities, he doesn’t have to plan twenty years in advance. For example:
Wallace said he would never build a plant that would be five times larger than he thinks the flow is; he instead builds plants with the ability to build on as growth occurs.
Wallace also cautioned that grants may not always be available for fixing all the water system’s known problems, when they get out of hand.
