Public Comment & Hearing - WS-21182A-25-0171 - Foothills Water & Sewer, LLC

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Arizona Corporation Commission 2h 51m 8 agenda items transcribed 3 days ago official recording ↗

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What is covered in the opening of the hearing and the appearance roll‑call?

Julia Motter 0:00

Okay, let's go on the record. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Arizona Corporation Commission. My name's Julia Motter. I'm the administrative law judge assigned to preside over this matter. This is the time set to commence the evidentiary hearing in the matter of the application of Foills Water and Sewer LLC for an extension of its existing certificate of convenience and necessity to provide water and wastewater service. The docket number is WS 211822. A dash two five dash zero one seven one. Let's take appearances for the record, starting with the company.

Tim Sabo 0:40

Uh good morning, Your Honor. Tim Sabo with the law firm of Osborne Maladon appearing on behalf of the applicant. Foothill Foothills Water and Sewer L L C

Julia Motter 0:49

Okay, and for staff.

Bridget Humphrey 0:51

Good morning, Your Honor. Bridget Humphrey appearing on behalf of staff and with me the today are Cam Ayton and Vicky Wallace, our two witnesses.

Julia Motter 1:00

Okay, thank you. All right, and we will start with public comment this morning. And before we get started with that, I wanna thank everyone who has called or come in person today to provide public comment. Please be assured that although public comments are not considered evidence in the case, the commissioners do review them and consider them when making their decisions. It doesn't look like we have anyone on the phone today. I do have one speaker slip. If there's anyone else, they should fill out a speaker slip. No idea where those are, but at least one person found one. Okay, back there. Um And you can bring that up to me, but we will start with the one person we have here. And we do ask that you keep your comments to three minutes.

Julia Motter 1:47

Um as a matter of fairness, we do that, but you can always provide written comments. um in the docket as well. And if you need instructions on that, they're on the commission's website or there's probably someone in this room who can help you with that. Okay, so with that we will take uh Mr. Aaron Sally's good. You can come forward and I there should be some sort of light on that microphone that's on the screen. All right, you may go ahead.

Aaron Selley 2:16

Okay. Um good morning, Your Honor. My name is uh Aaron Selley. I'm a stakeholder in the affected area. We drove in from Yuma this morning because we think this is a very important case for the future of the foothills. Um that's where I typically am involved and where I keep my focus of effort is foothills and foothills development. We are absolutely not against development or developing in the future. Um, in fact, that's how I lived when I was a child. My father was in construction, and so it's not the development that we So um, I'll just stick with this statement. I want to address whether this application satisfies the legal standard of public convenience and necessity. First, this is this expansion is not necessary because existing septic systems in portions of the proposed service area already provide safe, lawful wastewater servicing.

Aaron Selley 3:03

Granting exclusive utility rights where functioning systems already exist would eliminate viable private wastewater options without demonstrated public. Yeah. The application contains no engineering or environmental evidence showing that those systems are failing or pose a risk. Second, this request is premature. The applicant is seeking exclusive monopoly service territory before finalizing engineering plans, before obtaining construction approvals, and without defining infrastructure routing or locations. Approval under these conditions would grant territorial rights based on with speculation rather than demonstrated readiness or necessity. Third, the demanding projections, um, the demand projections appear inconsistent with actual development history in the foothills.

Aaron Selley 3:50

Portions of this region have taken decades to develop, yet the application assumes rapid growth and hundreds of new connections within only the first few years. These projections do not align with observed build out timelines and raise legitimate questions about whether projected demand reflects real conditions or theoretical modeling only.