County of Barrhead's water and sewer rates to increase three per cent

BARRHEAD - County of Barrhead councillors have approved a three per cent increase to the municipality's 2020 water and sewer rates.

Councillors passed all three readings on the 2020 Water and & Sewer Utility Bylaw No. 7-2019 at their Dec. 17 meeting — it's worth noting that this was an amending bylaw that changes the rates contained in the municipality’s original water and sewer bylaw.

Metered water service will rise from $50.20 per month for the first 10 cubic metres to $51.71 per month. Every 4.54 cubic metres will now cost an additional $17.48 per month instead of $16.97. Unmetered water service for individual residential dwelling units will increase from $82.56 to $85.04 per unit per month.

Sanitary sewer charges provided where water service is unmetered shall now increase from $41.28 to $42.52 per unit per month.

County manager Debbie Oyarzun said the rate increase is influenced by a similar 2.73 per cent increase implemented by the Barrhead Regional Water Commission, which provides water to the county and Town of Barrhead.

She said the commission passed a bylaw in November establishing a rate of $2.26 for every cubic metre of water provided to the town and county.

Oyarzun stressed to council that it is important to understand water and sewer services are provided to residents on a cost recovery basis.

“It’s a user-pay system. So you try to set up your utility bylaw so that only the users of water and sewer are paying for it … It’s not coming from your general tax pool.”

In short, if you live in the county and have your own private cistern and septic water tank, “then you shouldn’t be paying for water and sewer for someone that is hooked up to the county and town pipes,” Oyarzun said.

According to a chart provided by director of finance and administration Tamara Molzahn, the county achieved 96 per cent cost recovery in 2016, 94 per cent cost recovery in 2017 and 99 per cent cost recovery in 2018.

Molzahn noted they had budgeted for 94 per cent cost recovery in 2019 but they would actually achieve a percentage of cost recovery somewhere in the high 90s.

For now, the county is budgeting for 95 per cent cost recovery in 2020. This is in part due to the fact the county no longer has a contractor providing water utility services, which are being handled in-house.

Because the county is figuring out how much it costs and how much time is required to provide these services instead of contracting them out, Oyarzun indicated they decided not to push for any increases that would push them up to full cost recovery.

“Eventually we’d like to get back up to what we had in 2018, where it was like 99 to almost 100 per cent cost recovery,” she added.

Molzahn noted the rates for the rate using the county-operated water stations will remain at $7.81 per cubic metre because council had previously directed administration to review those services.