STEUBENVILLE — Jefferson County water customers are already facing a $10-per-month hike in their minimum-use base rate to get the cash-strapped department through 2026, but commissioners warn the pain isn’t going to end there.

Going forward, commissioners were told the system is rapidly nearing the end of its life expectancy — everything from water lines, pumps and fire hydrants to water tanks and transmission lines is at risk of failing — and they’re going to have to find a way to pay for necessary repairs and updates just to keep water flowing through the pipes and into customers’ homes. To get a third-party opinion on exactly how much it’s going to take, commissioners have contracted with the Rural Community Assistance Partnership for a comprehensive water utility rate study.

The price tag for the study is $12,000, but it will include a free study of the county sewer system as well. It will take about 60-90 days for RCAP’s recommendations to come in.

“I think it’s a really great price for all the work they have to do, especially with reviewing all the data,” Arcadis Engineering’s Andrew Dawson said. “I personally think rates will need to be at least doubled to do what needs done here. I think (RCAP) is going to suggest that, if not … more.”

The county’s aging water system includes 300 miles of water lines, 1,500 fire hydrants, 18 water tanks and eight water pump stations, all serving just 8,000 customers.

“The water lines in Amsterdam and Bergholz — they’re 85 years old. You have 12 miles of line across those two systems that are that age,” he said. “You probably have 50-100 more miles of lines installed around the 1960s that are now 65 years old. In 20-25 years, you’ll have another 100 miles that was installed in the ’80s, which is only 45 years ago now, but 30 years from now those lines will be in their 70s. Unless we start replacing water lines, the system will eventually just cease to function.”

Dawson said the Toronto transmission line that carries water to 6,000 Jefferson County customers is already 25 years old.

“We cannot allow that to get to the point where it starts breaking because then you’ll lose the whole system, so you’d also lose all your revenue,” he said. “That’s a $30 million replacement project that needs to be done in the next 20 years. You also have $7 million of lead service lines that you’re mandated by the federal government, the EPA, to replace in the next nine years.”

He said the county so far has done a good job rehabbing water tanks, which isn’t cheap.

“But replacing a tank is exceptionally expensive, so you want to repair the coatings to keep the tank metal in good shape,” he said. “Once you stop repairing the coatings, it’s going to get worse and worse, and you will no longer have the option to rehab the tank.”

He said the Ohio Public Works Commission recently denied emergency funding “for a pressure-reducing valve blowout in Mingo Junction that caused 16 sequential water breaks in one weekend” because the lines “are in the category of neglect.”

The county also has 51 pressure-reducing meter vaults that he said “could all fail at any second because there’s no rehab program to replace those valves, which cost tens of thousands of dollars each. If they fail, it will cause massive chain-reaction breaks.”

“No one else has a system with 300 miles of water lines and 18 water tanks serving 8,000 customers,” Dawson said. “That’s a very unique situation, a horrific situation.”

It’s not a pretty picture, Commissioner Tony Morelli said.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Morelli said. “It’s going to take a lot of planning, a lot of funding.”