Southwest Water Company's Services Group subsidiary, Operations Technologies, has won water and wastewater operations contracts in three counties in the south east US for a combined value of $7.1 million.
The contracts are for water and wastewater management in Forsyth, Georgia and Mobile County, Alabama, as well as renewal of its contract in Canton, Georgia.
The four and a half year Forsyth contract calls for OpTech to operate and maintain two water treatment facilities, two wastewater treatment plants and the city’s water distribution and sewage collection pipelines. Forsyth, a town of 5,000 people, is located approximately 60 miles south of Atlanta.
In Mobile County, OpTech is providing wastewater treatment operations and maintenance services, primarily to industrial customers, in an area along the northern edges of Mobile Bay. The five year contract is OpTech’s second in Alabama. The company also serves the Mobile suburb of Prichard.
OpTech won a three-year renewal of its contract to operate water and wastewater treatment plants in Canton, an Atlanta suburb of approximately 15,000 people. The company will continue to provide the city with water production, water distribution and sewage collection services. OpTech now serves nine clients in Georgia.
Anton Garnier, Southwest Water chairman and CEO, said, With the new contracts in Forsyth and Mobile County, the Southwest Water footprint in the south eastern US now includes approximately 20 client contracts in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.
The new contracts will be a much welcomed addition to the water treatment company’s portfolio as Southwest also revealed this week that it had made a loss in its fourth quarter. The company lost $410,000 in the quarter compared to a profit of $2 million in the previous year. This was despite revenues increasing by 8% to $47.5 million from $44 million last year. The loss was attributed to a dramatic increase in administrative costs, which doubled to $8.7 million.
For the full year, the company posted net income of $4.5 million, or 24 cents per share, down from $7.2 million, or 47 cents per share, last year.