Moulder to testify first
An officer of the court says Scott Moulder will testify as the first witness when the Pioneer Rural Water trial officially starts this afternoon at the Oconee Courthouse. Moulder, the county administrator, will be called in his capacity as representative of Oconee County, which is one of the parties challenging Pioneer Rural Water’s treatment plant project. Preliminary to the start of trial were the pre-trial motions that lasted for hours this morning and into afternoon. Pioneer attorney Ted Gentry started the pre-trial portion this morning by calling the legal challenge by Oconee County and the cities of Seneca and Westminster “an 11th hour” attempt to derail a project which as a ten-year history. Gentry chided the plaintiffs for waiting until this year and following the awarding of a construction contract to mount a legal challenge. And, so far as political bodies interjecting themselves into the affairs of another, he said, “It’s literally none of their business.” Attorney Bernie Ellis spoke for the plaintiffs and explained that the plaintiffs mobilized this year when Pioneer was forced into undertaking a new audit that examined figures and calculations for what the treatment plant would cost and whether the deal would turn out to be financially beneficial for the ratepayers. Ellis asked this question, “If a ratepayer does not have the right to challenge, who does?” He and his colleague, Hunter Freeman, decried Pioneer for originally estimating a project to cost $15 million when the contract signed called for spending $17 million. Larry Brandt, as attorney for the Joint Regional Sewer Authority, a Pioneer customer, said that while the sewer authority has the financial resources to go to court, individual Pioneer customers don’t, yet they will have to retire the project debt and pay the future costs of water made by Pioneer. Judge Lawton McIntosh made no immediate decision on the pre-trial motions. Instead, he directed the parties to be ready to start the trial at 2:30 this afternoon.