A message from Water Director Scott Schladweiler, originally published by Tucson Local Media.
Marana Water Director Scott Schladweiler
In July, the Town of Marana Water Department (Marana Water) relocated its administrative operations from the Marana Operations Center on Ina Road to its new home in downtown Marana—on the second floor of the Marana Municipal Complex (MMC) at 11555 W. Civic Center Drive. With the move, all of our operations managers and administrative, customer service, engineering and water resources staff are now located under one roof, something that we were not able to do at the Ina location.
Our new office space at the MMC allows us the room to grow with our expanding system and customer base. The new space also allows us to increase efficiencies by putting us side-by-side with Town departments that we work closely with on a daily basis. This change will help us to maintain the highest level of service.
With the change in location and modified operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are continuing to provide the same level of exceptional service to all internal and external customers with a few structural changes. Payments for water services will no longer be accepted at the Marana Operations Center on Ina Road as a result of a town-wide effort to streamline the cashiering process. Water customers are now encouraged to make payments for water services, including monthly water bills and impact fees, using the online bill pay system at www.maranaaz.gov/water-pay-bill. All check payments for water services must now be mailed, delivered in person or delivered to the drop box at the MMC. Customers can also make payments by calling 520-382-1999.
Applications for new meter installations, start/stop service, lot inspections, and construction water meters have been available online since January, and have proven very successful for requesting service in a contact-free environment. Since January, we have processed more than 900 requests for service online, showing how easy and efficient this system has been! Marana Water’s customer service staff remains available for any and all questions about your water.
As an additional effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and ensure that all customers have access to clean, safe water for hand washing, water service disconnection for non-payment and charging of late fees was suspended under Marana Ordinance 2020.007. During this suspension, customers were still responsible for all water and sewer account charges. In December 2020, the Town Council rescinded this ordinance with an effective date of February 1, 2021. This date was chosen to give customers and staff time to prepare new programs to assist where needed, while also providing a deadline to prevent these past due balances from growing unmanageable. Outreach to customers began in November and will continue as this date gets closer. We have created new payment plan options as well as provided some additional resources for those that may need them. Our new website, www.MaranaAZ.gov/Water-Assistance, has all the information on these programs and how to sign up. Be on the lookout for information in the Town’s newsroom as well as social media platforms. We are here to help get our customers back on track.
Even while moving offices, Marana Water continued progress on a number of important projects. In 2018, the Town of Marana acquired the Adonis Mobile Home Park wastewater conveyance system, including its two at-capacity onsite treatment lagoons. The Town received a $1.5M loan from the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona (WIFA) to construct a new lift station and force main system that will pump sewage from the Adonis Mobile Home Park to the Marana municipal sewer system where it will be treated at the Marana Water Reclamation Facility and then recharged at the Marana Water Recharge Facility. The lagoons will be taken out of service and eventually clean closed, a process that will address environmental hazards and eliminate the need for future monitoring. The project has been completed and is now fully operational.
Construction of two water treatment campuses, one at Airline/Lambert and one at Picture Rocks, have been going non-stop since December 2019. These two facilities will reduce the concentrations of the unregulated compounds 1,4-dioxane and PFAs in two of our water systems. We have been fortunate thus far that the majority of the work completed as planned, but the schedule has recently incurred some unavoidable delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both sites are now anticipated to be operational by the end of January 2021. Bi-monthly project updates as well as quarterly sampling results continue to be updated on our website. This information and more can be found at maranaaz.gov/water-quality.
For more information on Marana Water projects and processes, visit maranawater.com, and follow us on Instagram @maranawater for news and updates!
