ANDERSON COUNTY — The question of whether to spend $17.6 million or $5.3 million on installing new water transmission lines within Anderson and Clemson areas is still up in the air.

And the Anderson and Clemson city councils will meet at noon Tuesday at the Anderson City Hall to discuss its proposal — the cheaper one of the two — and how they should proceed in their talks with the Anderson Regional Joint Water System.

“We are going to look at see if we can provide some type of guarantee that would make the members of the joint system more at ease, to make them comfortable that our plan will deliver what we say it will deliver,” Anderson City Utilities Director Jeff Caldwell said.

The Anderson-Clemson proposal consists of 10,800 feet of water transmission lines and is estimated to cost $5.3 million, Caldwell said. The proposal from the Anderson Regional Joint Water System — which Anderson and Clemson are members of — would install 65,200 feet of pipe and is estimated to cost $17.6 million.

Expansion is needed, officials say, because when the joint water system expanded its capacity from 32 million gallons of water per day to 45 million gallons per day, its transmission system wasn’t sufficient to support the added water.

And the disagreement lies in whether the Anderson-Clemson proposal would accomplish what the Joint Water System’s plan would.

Caldwell said the cities have had a third-party national engineer look at both plans.

“The engineer described one as a Ferrari being driven at 55 miles per hour and the other is a Cadillac, being driven at 65 mph,” Caldwell said. “They both can do the job. It’s just how much do you want to pay?”

On Tuesday, officials from both cities will discuss whether they will go to the joint water system with a guarantee stating that they will accept the liability if their proposal doesn’t deliver.

The meeting is open to the public.