That glass of water or cup of tea from the home tap will cost a little more starting in April, a regional water authority panel decided Thursday night.
The rate hike, which will raise the price of water about a dime a day, was unanimously approved by the Representative Policy Board (RPB) of the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority at its headquarters on Sergeant Drive in Long Wharf. Unlike other public utilities that must ask the state Department of Public Utility Control for hikes, the water authority’s RPB has final say over the authority.
The three-month water bill of the typical customer would increase from $97.20 to $106.39, a hike of $9.19 for the period or about 10 cents a day. The typical family uses about 205 gallons of water a day, according to the authority.
Leonard Honeyman Photo
The rate hike will go for infrastructure improvements and repairs during the next 15 months that cannot be put off, Orest (Tom) Dubno (pictured), New Haven’s representative on the 21-member board, said after the meeting.
“This is the most difficult decision this board has to make,” he said.
The decision to seek a rate hike came after months of committee work and deliberations, he said. Although he acknowledged that New Haven residents may have a harder time coming up with the average $9.19 increase over each three-month billing period than residents in richer communities, Dubno said the authority could not set different rates for different towns.
The RPB has representatives from 20 municipalities from Killingworth in the east to Prospect and Cheshire in the North and the Lower Naugatuck Valley and Milford in the west. The governor also appoints a member. The authority serves about 400,000 people.
Ironically, member Thomas P. Clifford III of Ansonia made the motion for the rate increase. Water customers in his city, as well as Derby and Seymour, are exempt from the rate hike for five years because that exemption was part of the deal when the regional authority acquired their water company, Birmingham Utilities, in 2008, Clifford was chair of the group that studied the rate hike question.
The RPB held a public hearing on the rate increase last month. It drew only two members of the public. Authority spokeswoman Joan Huwiler said the outreach that authority did in the weeks leading up to the hearing apparently answered customers’ questions and concerns.
Members of the water board listen to discussion about a rate hike.
“We plan to invest $39 million to help improve the authority’s water system over the next 15 months,” said authority President Larry Bingaman said in a statement. Those projects range from installing and replacing water pipes to protecting the 27,000 acres of reservoir watershed lands to information technology and equipment, the statement continued.
The authority’s income is below budget because of too much of a good thing, Bingaman told the RPB. The authority’s reservoirs are 95 percent full, when the average for this month is 77 percent.
The past two years have been unusually rainy, in fact among the wettest in the authority’s 98-year history, which means customers require less water for lawns and gardens, car washes do less business and consequently the authority makes less money, Huwiler said after the meeting. She said the shortfall had nothing to do with the rate increase, since the income is supplemented from a rate stabilization fund. The fund is refilled when income exceeds budget estimates, she said.
This is what happens when you have a representative board that is not a representative board. To top it all, it's a monopoly. This rate hike is nearly ten percent. That is 4 or more times the rate of inflation and this hike is a real crock.