Columbus Light and Water customers are seeing a near 17-percent increase to their water and sewer bills with rate increases the utility implemented this month.
The move raises the average customer bill for both services by $4.34 per month, General Manager Angela Verdell said. It also raises the minimum bill and usage charges.
Verdell said the rate increase should generate $1,275,840.16 annually for the utility and will be used to fund capital improvements for those services. The city gave CLW roughly $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds, for which the utility received a 100 percent match from the state.
“We have an extensive list of capital improvement projects totaling upwards of $60 million that are needed and are being prioritized,” Verdell said. “Total ARPA funds will provide a little over $2 million to address some capital improvement, but the rest will have to come from somewhere.”
Beyond ARPA funded projects, CLW also has nearly $500,000 of upgrades planned in 2023, such as upgrading its lift stations at Martin Luther KingJr. Drive and the fairgrounds and upgrading its North and South water plants.
“When infrastructure investment is not made, utilities stop working and millions of dollars are needed all at once to bring utilities up to standard,” Verdell said. “We would much rather have incremental increases to consistently provide reliable services.”
According to Verdell, CLW worked with the Mississippi Water Resources Institute at Mississippi State University to help determine the new rates that would meet future usage demands.
“This rate increase will allow CLW to continue to provide clean and reliable water services as we always have. The water industry is not cheap, and revenue generation is low,” said Ricky Dye, CLW water manager. “Costs are rising across the board, and we had to decide between letting the system suffer or raise rates.”
CLW measures water usage in CCF, where one CCF is equal to approximately 748 gallons of water. Verdell said that an average CLW customer uses less than 4 CCF of water per month — about 3,000 gallons of water.
For those inside of city limits, CLW has increased their base water rate from $3.43 per CCF to $4 per CCF, an almost 17 percent increase.
Minimum bills are bumped from $13.42 to $16. CLW provides water and sewer services to nearly 10,000 customers within city limits.
For CLW customers living outside the city limits, the rate has increased from $5.15 per CCF to $6 per CCF, about a 16.5 percent increase.
The new minimum bill went up from $20.60 to $24. CLW serves more than 600 water customers outside of city limits, along with 530 sewer customers. The utility serves nearly 10,000 households inside the city limits.
“Due to the additional cost to provide services outside of the city limits, customers outside of the city limits historically have paid 1.5 times the rate of customers residing within the city limits,” Verdell said.
The sewer rates are 100 percent of the water rates, meaning sewer rates increased by the same amount.
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