The District of Houston is going to spend $5,000 to figure out how much it costs for water production and distribution.
And from that information, it will then decide how much to charge commercial, industrial and residential customers for bulk water.
The matter of bulk water rates has been a discussion point for some weeks at council, arising first from a staff proposal to reduce rates for bulk water from the District’s new distribution point because a camp provider for Coastal GasLink covered a significant portion of its costs.
Civeo Corporation, which is operating the camps near Houston for Coastal GasLink, chipped in $374,600 with the District adding $177,900 for construction and installion of the now-open water distribution and sewage acceptance station.
That construction and installation would be sufficient to lower the universal fee by $2 per cubic metre of water to $4 per cubic metre. With a scheduled increase this year of 25 cents a cubic metre, the fee would then be $4.25 a cubic metre.
That sparked a council discussion about what the new proposed bulk water rate for residential customers would be compared to rates and taxes for municipal water service based on average household usage.
Council then asked staffers to look at rates from surrounding communities, prompting an analysis of bulk commercial/industrial, residential and annual unmetered residential rates of seven northern communities.
Looking at those other rates, staffers determined the average difference between unmetered rates and bulk water rates.
Based on that average difference, recommended the District keep the planned $4.25 a cubic metre rate for commercial/industrial users but drop the residential bulk rate here to $3.90 a cubic metre.
But before council decides on what rate structure it wants to adopt, it’ll be hiring Urban Systems at approximately $5,000 to provide water production and distribution costs.
The new water station also has a bulk sewage disposal component and for this use, staffers have recommended a reduction from $6.25 a cubic metre to $4.25 a cubic metre. There’s been no decision on this recommendation yet.