Anne Niethammer and other homeowners at her East Oahu condominium complex were just getting used to higher water rates put in place in 2012 when she noticed another change on her bill earlier this year.
In a transition from its previous two-month billing cycle, the Honolulu Board of Water Supply in January began collecting a fixed "billing" charge on a monthly basis, effectively doubling the amount paid by consumers.
Niethammer and most other Board of Water Supply residential customers used to pay the fee — currently $7.02 — once every two months. Now they pay it once a month.
"It really caught us off guard," Niethammer said. "It’s a huge new source of revenue for them. Instead of $7 times six months, it’s now $7 times 12 months," she said.
The seven-member Board of Water Supply board of directors voted in November 2011 to double the billing charge for most residential customers as part of a five-year rate-hike plan that went into effect in January 2012. The BWS held off on doubling the billing charge until January of this year, when it switched to the new monthly billing cycle, said BWS spokeswoman Tracy Burgo.
The additional revenue from the billing charge will be used to cover the cost of a new billing system, maintenance and repairs to automatic meter-reading equipment, new customer services such as online bill-viewing and bill-paying, and other expenses, Burgo said. The BWS has more than 170,000 customers.
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WATER WORKSHOP
The Board of Water Supply offers brown-bag tours from noon to 12:45 p.m. every Wednesday at Halawa Xeriscape Garden.
BWS officials lead a guided tour of the garden and give presentations on Oahu’s water cycle and efficient water conservation practices. Participants learn how to select “un-thirsty plants” for their own gardens.
Halawa Xeriscape Garden demonstrates in a residential-scale setting how gardens can be visually attractive while using less water than most popular garden plants.
Location: 99-1268 Iwaena St. (in Halawa Valley’s central industrial area)
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"I know this is a difficult situation, and we do empathize with our customers," Burgo said. "We are customers, too."
The BWS inserted notices in customer bills and made presentations at neighborhood board meetings to inform the public of the changes, she said. The BWS has received complaints about the billing charge, but Burgo said she did not have an exact number.
Laurence Goldstein of Pearl City said he called his city councilman and a Board of Water Supply official after seeing the increased billing charge on his monthly statement.
"I know that we’ve got a lot of old sewer pipes, and I don’t mind paying for that," Goldstein said. "But charging $7.02 for processing your bill seems excessive."
Burgo at BWS said other utilities, such as Hawaii Electric Co. and Hawaii Gas, have a similar fee but call it a "customer charge." With the billing charge, the BWS separates the two principal costs associated with supplying water: customer costs and water-usage costs.
Customer costs are fixed or uniform costs associated with furnishing water service, regardless of whether any water is used, such as meter reading and billing, Burgo said. The water-usage cost includes all costs associated with producing and delivering water to customers, and covers staff operations and maintenance, minus costs covered by the billing/customer charge, Burgo said.
The bad news for BWS customers is that the billing charge is going to continue to rise. Beginning July 1 the now-monthly fee goes up to $7.70; to $8.44 on July 1, 2014; then to $9.26 on July 1, 2015.
In January 2012, when bills were sent out every two months, the fee was $6.40, rising to $7.02 six months later.
The increase in the billing charge is the smallest part of three BWS bill increases customers are absorbing. The water portion of the bill and the sewage portion are also increasing.
In 2011 the board approved a 70 percent increase in water rates over five years. In 2010 the City Council approved a 29 percent increase in sewer fees from fiscal 2011 through fiscal 2016.
The increases in water, sewage and billing charges combined will push the average bill for a household using 13,000 gallons of water a month to $190.57 a month by fiscal 2016, from $155.63 a month today.
The BWS decided to switch to a monthly billing cycle in the midst of the increases. That was done for several reasons, including allowing the BWS to more quickly identify unusual water usage resulting from leaks, said Burgo. The new billing cycle also allows customers to "better align" their water/sewer bill payments with other bills, according to the BWS website.
The higher sewer charge was approved to pay for work on the system’s 2,100 miles of pipes and 70 pumping stations, said Markus Owens, spokesman for the city’s Department of Environmental Services.
Residential sewer bills are calculated by adding together a base charge and a volume charge that is tied to the amount of water used by a household. To determine the volume of sewage, the Department of Environmental Services takes the number of gallons on a household’s BWS bill, discounts it by a 20 percent "irrigation factor" and charges a per-gallon rate on the remaining 80 percent.
The irrigation factor represents an estimate of the amount of water used by a household that does not end up in the sewer system, Owens said.
Rising water bills and a desire to conserve water are prompting many consumers to look for ways to cut their consumption.
KC Coburn and her husband decided to pursue a water catchment system that will allow them to collect rainwater from their roof and store it in barrels to irrigate their yard. Coburn said they plan to build the system this summer.
The couple has already rigged up a system that captures water from condensation on their solar water heater. "We get about three gallons on a really hot day," said Coburn, adding that they use it to water the plants in their yard.
