I just finished reading Doug Cook's Daily Courier article regarding the Wilhoit Water Company.
It helped bring me up to speed on the issue there. I was curious if there's any chance the water company will fail? There's a huge division regarding fees and, if it's operating at a loss, that seems like a possible scenario. Maybe there is some sort of performance requirement with the Arizona Corporation Commission. If not, who would inherit this problem? Obviously the homeowners will be impacted on some level. It doesn't sound like Walden Meadows Community Co-op can sustain the additional usage even if they wanted to help long term. I know that ACC encourages consolidation of smaller water companies - but is that an option here?
I wonder if a temporary surcharge would alleviate any of problem. Does the state provide any assistance to the $100,000 cost of a commercial well? Compound that with the operating loss and the huge back tax issue, it sure looks like the foreshadowing of a complete collapse.
UPDATE: I found a link to Water Infrastructure Finance Authority (WIFA) that may be a possible solution to the financing of the $100,000 well. Of course, it sounds like they may have to qualify for this as it is a low interest rate loan. I assume they have explored this option, but I wanted to share it.
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Thanks for bringing your readers up to date on this problem! And for correcting me -- I hate it when I've given the wrong info (Thunderbird vs. Walden). Likely the problem was that the developers of Wilhoit figured they needed to provide water, so were willing to subsidize a water company ... then it turned out that property sold without the water (Walden Meadows, whose original buyers hauled water from a well down at Kirkland Junction & only later put in a cooperatively owned well, from which they hauled water. I don't know whether they still haul or if mains have been put in...)
Even if the water company gets a new well, there's the new problem of the low arsenic rules -- and that area is heavily mineralized.
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