CUP Proposal: Major Growth or Massive Debt for Culpeper

A group of developers called Culpeper Utility Partners (CUP), LLC is trying to sell an oversized water and sewer proposal that would force Culpeper to recruit growth at an unsustainable rate or saddle taxpayers with massive debt. The proposal CUP has brought before Culpeper County would provide water and sewer service for the Town Environs growth area—but the Town of Culpeper is upgrading infrastructure to serve the same area. This overlap would result in excess capacity of at least one million gallons, the equivalent of 5,000 homes.

The CUP plans costs $128 million and the only way to recoup that expense is to connect the proposed sewer & water system to new developments, with rural lands in the crosshairs. If the new developments don’t come, taxpayers will pay back the costs with interest.

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Dear [ Decision Maker ],

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Please seek a water and sewer solution for Culpeper County that provides for reasonable growth over the next 20 years, instead of relying on a major development boom.  The County and the Town should work together toward a smaller system than the CUP proposal that will meet Culpeper's needs at less cost.

The CUP proposal makes rural land along the sewer line vulnerable to unplanned growth and creates at least 1 million gallons of excess capacity, enough to serve 5,000 new houses.  While some of this capacity could serve desirable commercial or industrial developments, it's hard to imagine creating enough jobs to use all--or even most--of this capacity. In order to pay for the $128 million infrastructure that CUP has proposed the County would be put in the position of recruiting growth, rather than accommodating growth. The associated infrastructure costs for this rapid development (schools, police, fire & rescue, etc) would put an additional burden on existing taxpayers.

Culpeper has already seen extremely rapid growth in the last few years.  Few citizens want to see another explosion of development.  But even if we did, the real estate market is highly uncertain, and we cannot depend on new developments to pay for $128 million worth of water and sewer facilities.  If they do not, the costs will fall on taxpayers.  The CUP proposal is too risky for taxpayers and for our community.

Sincerely,

[Your name]
[Your address]

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CUP Proposal: Major Growth or Massive Debt for Culpeper