The City Council approved the water and sewer rates on Tuesday, which will be rising, but they would have been higher if not for an earlier decision.
Water and sewer bills will be rising by 3.5 percent for Watertown residents and other customers. A residential customer who uses 4,000 cubic feet of water will see an increase of $26.87 per quarter. The rate for 100 cubic feet of water for tier 1, which is most single family homes, is $5.68 for water, $11.46 for sewer, and $17.14 combined.
Despite the increase, City Manager George Proakis said the rate hikes have been higher in recent years, and it is below what had been forecast.
“Three-point-five percent is the lowest increase I have seen in water/sewer rates in a very long time pretty much anywhere,” Proakis said. “A lot of that is due to the work that this Council did to put money into the water and sewer infrastructure out of the federal ARPA funds that were available to us and by putting some of that to meeting some of the needs of water and sewer it’s allowing us to keep that number down.”
Public Works Superintendent Greg St. Louis said the City had a study done by an independent consultant in 2018 that projected double digit increases, but that has been avoided. He added that the increase forecast for the next five years will be under 5 percent.
“Last year we came to the Council with a request for (Fiscal Year)24 with an increase of 5.5 (percent) for water and 6 (percent) for sewer,” St. Louis said. “We telegraphed that if we were able to obtain ARPA funds to offset our capital plan program and bring forward some of capital projects to address aging water and sewer infrastructure, so we were able to knock those interest rates down. As you [the Councliors] are aware, that went through this winter.”
Both the water and sewer budgets are separate enterprise funds, which are self contained and must provide their own income. A large portion of the expenses comes the MWRA assessments paid for the water and to take care of waste water, Proakis said. The MWRA’s FY2023 water and sewer assessments were $4,592,938 for water and $7,332,350 for sewer, according to the memo to the Council. The budget anticipates a 4 percent increase each year, and also includes $1 million in capital improvements.
Councilor Tony Palomba noted that the water and sewer budget will have retained income of 25 percent and asked why it is so high. St. Louis said that is like the stabilization fund, in place incase of an emergency situation.
“If we had something let go on Charles River we are looking at $7 million to clean up and address,” St. Louis said. “Utilities tend to carry that range of funds to address those types of issues.”
Councilor Lisa Feltner asked about the replacement of water meters with ones that give live reads via a radio signal. St. Louis said the replacement started about five years ago is about 40 percent done. He expects the vast majority to be completed by December.
The City Council approved the Fiscal Year 2025 water and sewer rates unanimously.
Considering the excellent quality of our water, the aging infrastructure we constantly need to repair/replace on both the drinking water and wastewater lines, we are doing remarkably well on holding down the costs. Great job by DPW and the MWRA all around! Nowhere else in the country let alone the world could you find such excellence around this essential service.