San Antonio Water Systems customers could be paying more for their water next year.SAWS presented its Revenue Requirements, Proposed Rates and the Customer Bill impacts relating to its FY2013 Budget to the City Council Wednesday.
"The 2013 rate adjustment that we are proposing is 11.3 percent. It's 1.7 percent for water supply, with basically the remainder of 9.6 percent being dedicated to the waste water business," said Doug Evanson, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for SAWS.
The percentage comes out to be around a $5.23 cent increase per household.
"The percent being dedicated to the waste water business would go either to the ordinary course of business we need to do to maintain and continue with our sewer system, or the additional 6.6 percent we are asking for to do the accelerated SSO Reduction Program that we believe is necessary," said Evanson.
The SSO, or Sanitary Sewer Overflow, reduction program is expected to cost SAWS around $2.1 Million, which would go towards the rehabilitation of a number of pipelines and manholes throughout the city and a System Capacity Program.
"The additional pipeline rehabilitation in that backlog is some of what we do in our normal ordinary course, but we're trying to accelerate some of those things to drive down our sanitary sewer overflows," said Evanson.
The SSO Reduction Program is necessary for SAWS to be in compliance with the Clean Water Act, as they were notified by the Environmental Protection Agency back in 2007 of "alleged failures to comply with the Clean Water Act due to the occurrence of sanitary sewer overflows."
A Map of the sewer spills per gallons of sewage spilled in Bexar County from 2009-2012.
By: Marissa A. Wagner
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
