The city water and sewer rates have gone up.

The “Readiness to Serve Charge” has gone up 13.67% from $57.44 to $65.29. Even before any water is used we have to pay $65.29 just because we are hooked up to the system. By comparison the electric companies “Just to be a customer charge” is $18.00 per quarter. The gas company? $25.50 per quarter.

Not only are we now paying more just to have the opportunity to use water, the rate for the water has gone up.

Water Rate last quarter: $1.57 per HCF. This quarter the rate is $1.591 per HCF for an increase of 1.34%.

Sewer Rate last quarter: $2.58 per HCF of water use. This quarter the rate is $2.898 per HCF of water use for an increase of 12.33%.

I’m just flabbergasted.

Averaged out with the same HCF usage of 18 our bill increased by 10.56%.

3 Comments

  1. #
    Erin
    April 17th, 2009 at 6:41 pm

    I live in Keene, NH, and just received my quarterly bill reflecting an increase in price. If you’re flabbergasted in Grand Rapids, you’d pack up and move if you lived here.

    Water: from $3.11/hcf to $3.78/hcf
    Sewer: $4.76/hcf to $5.28/hcf

    My quarterly bill was over $700. In the past it was usually around $300.

  2. #
    sally
    April 14th, 2010 at 7:36 am

    Neither of you can complain. I live in Tallmadge Twp Michigan. We are on the Grand Rapids Water System. Our water rate is 4.04 per HCF service charge of $25.01. Our sewer rate is 10.359 per HCF (not a typing error it is really 10.359!!) service charge of 98.92. We only used 16 HCF this last quarter. We conserve water just to keep our bill down and Grand Rapids raises the rates because people are conserving!!

    • #
      Jason
      April 14th, 2010 at 8:04 am

      Yeah, that’s kind of awful there. These are the rates from over a year ago, I’ll have to grab my next quarterly bill and see how things are looking now. I know my overall dollar amount has gone up, but I haven’t done the math in a little while to see what kind of rate increase I’ve got going.

blank