ST. LOUIS – The St. Louis City board of aldermen will have its first real debate Thursday morning of the proposed legislation that would significantly raise the water bill for city residents. 

The board of aldermen will meet at the City Hall at 10:00 a.m. Among their agenda item perfecting board Bill 49 or the water rate bill. One city official told FOX 2 that a “spirited conversation” is expected.

As the water rate bill takes the spotlight, FOX 2 was granted access to take cameras inside the city’s water treatment plant, seeing leaky pipes and broken pumps.

Kurt Skouby, the director of public utilities for the city of St. Louis, told FOX 2 that there is always going to be some leakage inside the facility, but it shouldn’t be as much as we saw. Skouby said the city’s water department is in desperate need of additional funding to keep up with inflation, repairs and infrastructure needs.

Skouby also explained that water rates haven’t gone up for 13 years and the city has been using reserve funds to keep things going, but that pot of money is drying up. Going from $33 million to just $2 million now. Recent water main breaks aren’t helping matters.

The city has seen many breaks including one that flooded part of Highway 40 near Forest Park back on May 12. Firefighters had to rescue one family from a minivan taking on water.

Skouby shared that aging infrastructure is a major reason for the breaks. The bill being debated Thursday would raise the typical water bill for city residents by $15 a month starting next month. Then there would be another jump of about the same amount next January.

“We need to be able to build up our reserves again, so we can start proactively start replacing some of these pumps, waters and other items that we’re seeing fail,” Skouby expressed.

“We’ll get to a point very quickly where something like this break, and we don’t have the money to make the repairs, so it’s going to sit.”

There will likely be a vote on whether to advance the bill Thursday after it is perfected. If it passes, the final vote could be taken at next week’s meeting.