SALT LAKE CITY — Water bills will look a lot different under a proposed change for customers serviced by the Salt Lake City Public Utilities.
The agency is proposing moving its tiered water rate system year-round for residential customers serviced by Salt Lake City, instead of just in the summertime. It will also enact noticeable rate changes for commercial, industrial and other customers. The rates changes would apply to people in Salt Lake City, Millcreek, Holladay, Cottonwood Heights and parts of Murray, Midvale and South Salt Lake.
The proposal comes as a bill was passed by the Utah State Legislature to expand tiered water rates across the state in an effort to force conservation. Under tiered water rate systems, the more you use? The more you pay.
Salt Lake City's proposed rate changes will largely be used to pay for aging infrastructure. Salt Lake City is modernizing some water treatment facilities (some have reached the end of their shelf life, having been built in the 1950s). The rates are also designed to promote water conservation.
"We noticed a pretty substantial change in how people are using water on our system," said Laura Briefer, the director of Salt Lake City Public Utilities.
Utah farmers in the fight of their lives over water usage:
Conservation is actually one of the issues Salt Lake City is grappling with as it contemplates the new rates. As population has grown, Salt Lake City has documented as much as a 30% decrease in water consumption.
"It’s fantastic that water use has been declining even as we’ve been growing," Briefer told FOX 13 News. "And we want people to use less water. We also have to know, though, that much of the cost of running a water utility and sewer utility is fixed."
Salt Lake City Public Utilities is proposing to lower the threshold for the tiers. For example, most residents are currently in "Block 1" which is 0-10 centrum cubic feet. Under the change? It will be 0-5ccf. The rate will go up $1.01 and jump based on how much people use. As part of the rate changes, Salt Lake City will no longer use a special "drought surcharge" it had when water was more scarce.
"We actually took a deep dive and looked at all of the water bills we’ve sent out over the last year or so and found that half of the bills we sent are for 5ccf or less," Briefer said.
Salt Lake City Public Utilities also convened a sort-of "focus group" to get feedback on the rates. Tom Godfrey was one of those who participated.
"The whole point was to make sure they were fair, reasonable, and that they covered the costs of our future needs," he told FOX 13 News on Wednesday.
Godfrey said he believes most people will be OK with the proposed rate changes. But he noted his own water bill will be going up if he makes no changes.
"I just found out that my bill is going to go up $5 a month," Godfrey chuckled. "So there is going to be an impact."
Business customers will also see changes. They will not be on a tiered rate system, but will instead pay a flate rate. Fisher Brewing, a popular brewery in Salt Lake City's Granary District that makes its own beer, also pays a special fee because of the "pollutants" they put in the water system in the form of sugars.
"We’ve been treated the same as large industrial polluters for a long time under the city’s rate structure," said Tim Dwyer, a co-owner of Fisher Brewing. "This new proposed structure actually takes into account how much we actually use."
Dwyer said Fisher Brewing has tried to be careful about conservation. When he asked Salt Lake City Public Utilities for a calculation of his bill under the proposed new rates, Dwyer got some good news.
"We’re going to be seeing up to a 30% decrease in our overall bill," Dwyer told FOX 13 News. "Not a lot of things in our business are going down these days, with tariffs hitting and the price of our ingredients going up. But it’s a welcome change for us."
Other commercial customers may see increases in their rates.
But Briefer said users can also see a tangible benefit of the changed rates.
"With our tiered rate structure and increasing volume metric water rates? We anticipate additional water conservation which leaves more water available to Great Salt Lake," she said.
A number of cities across Utah have tiered rate systems. But with the Utah State Legislature passing the new law pushing tiered rates, other cities are also now exploring switching to it. The Provo City Council will be briefed on a tiered rate proposal next week, with a vote scheduled for April 22.
"It is a simpler tiered rate structure than some cities with three defined tiers," Gordon Haight, the head of Provo's public works department, said in a statement to FOX 13 News.
The Salt Lake City Council is scheduled to be briefed on the rates as part of budget discussions on April 15. Salt Lake City Public Utilities will also hold a virtual town hall on Facebook to solicit public feedback on April 17. The city is also launching a website to take public comment.
See the proposed Salt Lake City water rates here:
This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake—and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of our stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.
