Toledo and its suburbs are not the first set of regional governments to squabble over water and likely won’t be the last.

Officials from northwest Ohio municipalities also are not the first along Lake Erie and elsewhere in Ohio attempting to set aside years of differences or budgetary conflicts to band together with at least semiequal rights to a drinking-water treatment system.

An increasing number of Toledo area officials, including the mayors of Toledo and Sylvania, along with Lucas County commissioners, are pushing for a regional approach they say will quell either real or empty threats from suburban communities to break away and build their own treatment plant. Such a move would leave Toledo in the lurch with a drinking water plant unnecessarily large for just the city and necessitate hefty rate increases to cover the $500 million ongoing upgrade and repairs at the Collins Park Water Treatment Plant and its pumping stations.

Councilman Lindsay Webb, chairman of council’s committee that oversees infrastructure, has been a proponent of a regional system under which the suburbs are equal partners.

A study released earlier this month indicated it would make financial sense to form a regional water authority in which all the communities are partners.

“I have asked for a briefing on how it could happen,” Ms. Webb said.

An effort in Cincinnati to create a regional system was handily rejected by city voters five years ago.

Proponents there said a regional approach would have helped keep rates lower — similar to the argument backers of a Toledo-area regional district have made.

Cincinnati commissioned an independent study that found a regional public water utility would keep rates low by spreading costs over a large customer base.

A regional water authority began Jan. 1 to serve in southeast Michigan. The city of Detroit; Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne counties, and the state of Michigan united to form the Great Lakes Water Authority.

Toledo officials are studying the failure in Cincinnati as well as the authority in Detroit.

“The stumbling block in Cincinnati was public employees for the system had their own pension system and were not paying into [the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System] so they could not resolve the retirement issue,” Ms. Webb said.

She said the provision in the Ohio Revised Code that dictates such authorities requires the employees pay into the state retirement system.

“When they could not reach an accord the deal fell apart, and they did not have union support for the ballot initiative,” she said.

‘Not the worst idea’

Cincinnati and Detroit officials said creating such an authority is a daunting task.

Toledo Law Director Adam Loukx said the change in Toledo would likely require a referendum.

“It is an intergovernmental agreement and the process is spelled out in the Ohio Revised Code,” he said.

Rocky Merz, spokesman for the city of Cincinnati, recalled the proposal was rejected about five years ago when voters overwhelmingly voted against a city charter amendment that would have made it possible.

“We contract with other jurisdictions outside the city for water service, and in addition, we provide water to much of the metropolitan area, and we extend even further and do billing for other jurisdictions,” Mr. Merz said.

That failed Cincinnati regional water district would have transformed its utility into a public regional water district instead of a city-owned utility, as it exists there still and the way it is in Toledo.

Wendell Young, a Cincinnati councilman who opposed the change in 2010, said he was “not a fan of the way it was going to operate and did not feel there was enough community input.”

“I don’t think it’s the worst idea in the world, but it has to be done properly,” Mr. Young said.

Lucas County Commissioner Pete Gerken said one of the reasons Toledo should favor a regional system is the migration of water customers outside the city limits.

The city of Toledo used to pay the majority of the revenue to operate its system because the majority of water users lived in the city, he said. Now, 50 percent of the users live in “contract communities” — those that buy Toledo’s water in bulk, Mr. Gerken said.

Suburbs such as Sylvania and those in Monroe County want “to be treated as investors, not customers,” he said.

Key motivators

That migration was part of the reason people in Cincinnati wanted a regional water district. Its water system serves 50 other local jurisdictions by contract, in addition to the city itself. The total service area is more than 800 square miles, but the city accounts for less than 80 square miles of that territory.

The motivation in Cincinnati was also monetary, Mr. Young said.

Cincinnati at the time was wrestling with a massive budget deficit predicted for 2011, and it was believed suburban investment in the water system would provide a influx of cash to the budget-beleaguered municipality.

Bob Daddow, a deputy Oakland County executive and chairman of the Great Lakes Water Authority board, said their authority was only possible because of Detroit’s bankruptcy.

“Absent the bankruptcy, we would not have gotten where we are because the city charter requires 60 percent or a two-thirds vote to form an authority, and we would have never gotten that because people in Detroit considered [the water system] a jewel,” Mr. Daddow said.“As a practical matter, we would not have even bothered to do it because it would have been a waste of time.”

The Great Lakes Water Authority manages and controls regional water and wastewater services. Detroit and its suburban communities retained control of water and sewer services within the their own limits, he said.

The Great Lakes Water Authority has a 40-year lease with Detroit for $50 million a year, which the city uses to overhaul its aging infrastructure, he said.

The lease money also created a $4.5 million “water-residential assistance program” to help low-income customers pay water and sewer bills.

“The authority was roughly two to three decades in the making but didn’t really take off until such time as the bankruptcy and the emergency manager,” Mr. Daddow said.

Selling the system to the authority was rejected, he said.

Detroit’s deferred maintenance costs to the water treatment and delivery system was not going to help the city’s general fund, he said.

“[A lease] made sense because some of the stuff that is in need for the city’s infrastructure is in need for the suburbs as well, since many of the pipes flow to the suburbs,” he said.

The Toledo-area study, which was commissioned last year by the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments, did not address how much, if anything, suburbs would pay to buy part of Toledo’s Collins Park Water treatment plant or pay as part of a lease in exchange for equalized rates.

Sylvania Mayor Craig Stough dismissed investing in Toledo’s plant with cash payments. Instead, he wants equalized rates.

Mayor Stough said it would be feasible for Sylvania and Monroe County to cooperate on a new plant using an easement to put a 36-inch-wide water main beneath Bedford and Erie townships to collect lake water.

A second scenario highlighted in the study showed suburban communities would pay $41.31 monthly should they build a 60 million gallon a day plant and break away from the decades-old practice of buying Toledo water, for which they are charged more than city customers.

The report, written by Environmental Rate Consultants, Poggemeyer Design Group, and T. Parker and Co., said building a plant would cost $679 million but would inflate to $788 million in 2021.

A cooperative of suburban communities and Toledo would mean across-the-board $36.93 monthly water rates by 2024 for Toledo, Maumee, Sylvania, Lucas County, Wood County, Rossford, Northwood, Monroe County, Whitehouse, Perrysburg, and Fulton County, it said.

Contact Ignazio Messina at: imessina@theblade.com or 419-724-6171 or on Twitter @IgnazioMessina.

First Published July 3, 2016, 4:00 a.m.