NOTRE DAME SEEKS WATER

Summary:

City agrees to meet with Notre Dame building committee within 10 days to discuss matter.

The new Notre Dame Regional High School needs water, and it doesn't seem like the city of Cape Girardeau will supply it fast enough.

Several members of the high school's building committee came to the Cape Girardeau City Council meeting Monday to plead their case.

The school is two miles outside the city limits, but committee members asked that the site be annexed. The city is just beginning to build a sewer line in the area to supply the Twin Lakes Subdivision, which is north of the school and inside the city.

Former Cape Girardeau Mayor Gene Rhodes, vice chairman of the building committee, told the council that building is far enough along that "we're about to hit the panic button."

The school needs water by November at the latest, but city officials say there is no way the city could bring water out there by then.

City Manager Michael Miller, in an interview after the meeting, said normally a contractor will build a water line after the city staff designs the line, with the city supplying certain parts. That usually amounts to the city paying for about one-third of the project.

Rhodes offered to have the school design and build the line with parts purchased by the city, and the city reimbursing it for its usual percentage of cost. Or, he said, the school could drill its own well or it could hook into a water line at a nearby subdivision that has a well with enough capacity to supply the school. "The state told them they had enough water there to supply the cities of Cape Girardeau and Jackson," Rhodes told the council.

"We could get the design work done in just a few days and start digging in two weeks time and in two weeks more have it out there," Rhodes said in an interview after the meeting.

Miller said the line would cost about $600,000 with the city bearing about one-third of the cost. The city would benefit from having the water line out there, he said.

Jim Drury, a member of the building committee and a developer with about 160 acres near the high school, said he has about 375 lots ready for development next to the high school that could use the water as well.

In response to Rhodes' pleas, the council unanimously voted to have the city staff meet with the Notre Dame building committee to talk about the situation within 10 days.

Miller said after the meeting that a city study done before submitting a bond issue to expand the water system showed that the area around the high school did not have adequate water supplies for all the potential development there, so the city needed to bring water out there.

The council, in other business, approved an annexation policy that requires developers who want city services to commit to annexing their property and to conform to city codes. The council added an amendment that would bar the policy from affecting any existing agreements the city has with developers.