Chester weighs selling its water utilities to get out of bankruptcy

CHESTER, PA (KYW Newsradio) — As Chester Receiver, it’s Michael Doweary’s job to get the city out of bankruptcy, and one of his plans he’s pushing now is a sale of the city’s water utilities.

“Chester needs a mechanism to extract its equity from the system, its value from the system,” he said.

How it could happen is still in an early phase, according to Doweary.

“Could be an outright sale, could be a lease, could be the surrounding municipalities come together and basically buy Chester’s position out,” he said.

Doweary recently filed his bankruptcy plan in court, and initial reactions were largely negative, especially from the city’s retired workers , who fear losing benefits and complained of being largely left out of the city’s bankruptcy negotiations despite being its biggest group of creditors.

“Unfortunately we’re not far along yet. Part of the reason why we had the filing is to speed things up and quickly get to a point where we can have that meaningful dialogue,” he said. “If it were up to me the retirees would be at the table right now.”

Doweary also added that as the city goes through the monetization process, it’s important to be mindful of residents.

“We can’t go for the highest number if it translates into rates that are unaffordable and unsustainable,” he said.