Rossland Water Rates May Drown the City

Update April 2008: Rossland has commenced a plan to introduce water meters across the City over the next 3 years. This will allow great control over the setting of equitable rates based on consumption.

What would you do if you discovered that a much touted conservation measure was running your City Water Budget into the ground?

Rossland City Council made the news by moving to ensure equitable water funding through the current mix of properties with and without meters. And as you can see from this excerpt from a local news source, the situation could be pretty frightening under the existing fee structure… 

If everybody in Rossland switched to water meters tomorrow, says finance manager Deb Timm, the city would instantly lose as much as $200,000 a year. 
People with water meters now pay dramatically less for water than other homeowners. Homeowners who buy water from the city at the flat rate now pay $224 a year. People whose water is metered, if they don?t use large amounts or live here only part time, can pay as little as $72.
Council agreed: the situation had to change. The question was, what to? And how much?

Source: Rossland Record - Water meters deliver bargain prices: city stops the gap - News (If you want to read the whole article and it is not available, let me know).

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Rossland is a resort city, with a residential population of around three and a half thousand, and as such, the distribution of infrastructure costs has to be weighed carefully, so that the burden is seen to be equitable. And it is a burden, one that requires good management of the infrastructure and provision of a service that every resident takes for granted….

Water meters may encourage conservation, but Rossland is discovering that somebody still has to pay the large fixed costs of treatment and delivery…

“If we encouraged everyone to go to meters today, we’d go bankrupt,” city manager Ron Campbell said.
As it is, the water fund is running a $60,000 annual deficit, which the report recommends eliminating over the next three years through additional rate increases.
Commercial properties and new connections in the city are required to have water meters.

Source: globeandmail.com: Rossland hikes water rates to avoid drowning in debt (same deal with this article as above).

I’ve heard some ridiculous reasons to push for the installation of water meters, however, this scenario goes to show just what a mess it can be when there is partial or voluntary adoption of water meters. Rossland is making steps to ensure equitable distribution of the costs, understanding that;

“Fixed-rate customers have been subsidizing the metered customers,” says the report written by Deb Timm, acting manager of finance.
“Many metered customers are those who live in condos and are not full-time residents, therefore use little water.”

Source: globeandmail.com: Rossland hikes water rates to avoid drowning in debt

This is an interesting scenario, with much of the condo development associated with the recent push in development of Red Mountain as a year round destination. With many more units and single family dwellings planned for the future, the City needs to ensure that enough money is coming into it’s water fund. Under the Municipal Act, Municipalities in BC are required to run each arm of their responsibilities as almost stand alone entities, money can’t be moved from the water fund into a general one or vice versa.

As I’ve written before, in most cases, water meters are good for controlling the consumption of water in areas where there are supply restrictions or the quality of raw water makes treatment costly to provide potable water. However in most cases, the largest portion of a municipality’s cost in supplying water to your house is the construction and maintenance of the infrastructure; the treatment plants, pump stations, miles of pipelines and all of the valves and hydrants around town. This makes it extremely difficult to keep a tight reign on budgeting when a large portion of the funds are coming from consumption based charges, particularly as consumption decreases.

A Lesson?

This should be a lesson for any municipality considering the installation of water meters, firstly, from my experience it’s all or nothing, having two fee structures for the supply of a single commodity is difficult to manage and even more difficult to appear equitable. Secondly, if you decide that water meters are necessary, (which in some cases they most definitely are), how will the population respond when the price per kiloliter keeps going up, even though they are using less water? It will go up precisely because less water is being used!

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The simple fact is that the City needs to raise enough money to ensure that they can maintain or replace the existing infrastructure each year as needed. Any goals for conservation or more sustainable use of resources must acknowledge that as a reality and move from there.

If you enjoyed this post, why not try these ones:

• Castlegar Turns on the Water Metering
• Castlegar Water Meters Update
• Open Letter to Council - Water Meter Bylaw
• The Problem With Water Restrictions
• BCWWA - Are You Charging Enough For Water?