Does Water Conservation Mean Lower Water Rates?
“Apparently, conserving water won’t necessarily save you money!” Appearing on a local news website last autumn in northern California this headline highlights an interesting situation when water utility customers – after engaging in a successful conservation effort – received the surprising gift of an 8% water rate increase. An inside analysis of how utilities typically must manage costs provides insight into how successful conservation programs may result in an increase to customer’s water rates.
In most cases, water customers are charged on a cost per unit, or in this case, a cost per gallon basis. In the short term, a reduction in customer usage does result in a lower water service charge. Many utilities provide water and sewer service to their customers using this cost per unit of consumption standard. To the customer in the immediate term, there is a direct relationship between consumption levels and charges for service.
By extension, the argument goes, the utility saves money as well because it has to provide fewer “units of product” or in this case, fewer gallons of water to the end consumer. Common belief seems to hold then that the water provider will enjoy lower costs in direct proportion to reduced production. And all should be good, right?
Unfortunately, many utility costs are of the ‘fixed’ variety, meaning that they do not go up or down in proportion to the number of units produced. Fixed costs include expenses necessary for the utility to continue delivering the water and sewer service, and include things like payroll costs, equipment maintenance, insurance, debt service, and many other costs that won’t change if customers consume fewer gallons of water or produce a reduced volume of sewage or wastewater.
Income and revenue to the utility however, is a direct relationship between consumption level and price per unit. In other words, it is a function of quantity times price per unit. As water consumers decrease use, the inevitable result is a corresponding decrease in revenue paid back to the provider. So although conservation efforts may benefit customers in the short term with reduced fees and charges, the decline in income to the utility leads to economic shortfall. A successful water conservation program by extension, reduces revenue to the provider. The difficulty then lies in the fact that water providers and water utilities need this revenue just to provide providing on-going water service.
In summary, customers benefit from their conservation efforts by paying less overall, but the utility loses money. However, because of their fixed cost structure, utilities cannot survive for very long with expenses greater than revenues.
The point where utility expenses threaten to outpace revenues is usually marked by requests for a rate hike. Increases in rates then erase any gain the customer conservation efforts produced. After all, if fewer units are sold, the rate per unit (gallon) is going to have to be raised to a level that provides enough revenue to support the providers’ ongoing operations. This results in a basic conflict between provider revenue requirements and efforts to reduce customer bills.
Rates can be designed in advance to help offset some of the expected losses, thus stabilizing rates to some degree. Experienced water rate consultants can help design these kinds of rates in advance, and that’s a much better plan than waiting to see what happens after the fact.
The Water Utility Consultants at StepWise assist water and wastewater utilities nationwide improve business processes, improve revenue and expense management as well as manage customer water utility in a challenging economic environment. Contact the Water Utility and Wastewater Consulting Experts at StepWise today!