City utilities available to some homes outside Holton

When new homes are built inside Holton’s city limits, the owners of those homes can easily get a connection to the city’s water, sewer and electric utilities by contacting Holton City Hall.

But if new homes are built outside the city limits, they may still be able to access city water and sewer services — depending on where those homes are built.

Holton Interim City Manager Teresa Riley said that homes located generally within a three-mile radius of the corporate city limits can have access to the city’s electric utility, but for water service, the only limit on where the city’s water lines can go depends on whether Jackson County Rural Water District 3 is willing to cooperate with the city.

“Water can go out if RWD 3 is willing to give up the territory,” Riley said. “For example, if somebody is building a house and we have a water line that’s closer to them than RWD 3 does, and RWD 3 says yes, we can go out.”

That’s what happened with the Oak Ridge Subdivision, which is located between Holton’s south city limits and the Holton Country Club, said Riley, who added that the subdivision is currently “the only place we take water that’s outside the city.”

“When Oak Ridge was built, RWD 3 didn’t have a line that could feed those houses, and we had a line right there, so they gave it up to us,” she said.

Other rural subdivisions around the city, such as Timber Ridge and Deer Run, get water service from RWD 3, it was reported.

With electric services, however, the city has “about a three-mile radius” where power can be provided and lines can be serviced, Riley said. Beyond that, she added, other rural electric cooperatives (RECs) provide power and service rural homes.

Riley also noted that when the city extends its power lines and service beyond the city limits, care must be taken not to tread on other RECs’ territory. She cited one example where one homeowner wanted city power provided to a home being built just outside that three-mile radius in an area that is serviced by the Brown-Atchison Electric Cooperative.

“We started to build the line, and Brown-Atchison came in and said, ‘That’s our territory,’ so we had to pull the line back out,” she said. “It gets kind of touchy when you start getting into someone else’s area.”

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