Drought Over, Gwinnettians Still Saving Water, And The New Water Pricing Begins
January 12, 2010 by Jamie Ward
Filed under Environment
GWINNETT COUNTY — Government officials reported Tuesday that despite the drought ending and Lake Lanier now being full, Gwinnettians are still conserving water.
According to a county-issued press release, average water usage was 71.3 million gallons per day in 2009 compared with 71.9 million in 2008 and almost 18 percent lower than the 86.8 million gallons used in 2007. Total usage for the year was 26 billion gallons, compared with 26.3 in 2008.
Those numbers drew praise from Board of Commissioners Chairman Charles Bannister and Acting Director of the Water Department Lynn Smarr.
“With our raw water supply in the hands of others, we need to be good stewards of this resource,” Bannister said in reference to Georgia’s ongoing water war with Alabama and Florida. “I encourage everyone to keep up the good work.”
“We’ve had a wet year but normally when a drought ends people tend to slip back to their old habits,” Smarr said. “We’re very pleased that our customers are not doing that.”
Despite the conservation efforts being exercised by Gwinnettians, a new year-round, tiered pricing policy took effect Jan. 1. The policy was implemented last March after being approved by the Board of Commissioners and is similar to the summertime tiered pricing policies that caught many customers off guard this past summer, mainly because drought restrictions were lifted and these same customers were unaware of the price changes and they’d restarted to water their lawns. According to water department spokesman Peter Frank, customers will see the most recent change when they receive their bills later this month.
“The year-round tiered rate structure is a similar water billing model to all other metro Atlanta water and sewer agencies, to encourage year-round water conservation,” Frank said. “Prior to this year, we were the only agency that we are aware of, that had tiered rates only in the summer months.”
Frank said the average residential customer in Gwinnett uses between 6,000 and 7,000 gallons of water per month, so an average customer will only pay for their water at tier 1 rates, currently $4.11 per 1,000 gallons. So if a customer uses between 1 and 7,999 gallons, they will pay the tier 1 rate. If they use between 8,000 and 11,999 gallons — tier 2 — they’ll pay 1.5 times the tier 1 rate ($6.17) for this consumption. If they use 12,000 gallons or more, the amount over 12,000 will be billed two times the tier 1 rate ($8.22) for consumption at this level.
“Water conservation has become, and will continue to become more important, as metro Atlanta continues to grow,” Frank said. “The ongoing water waters could also potentially impact how much water is available to the metro area, so conservation is here to stay. Water pricing is one way to continue to encourage year-round water conservation.”
With the drought ended, Frank was then asked if there might be a rollback of the summer surcharges or better yet, a decrease in the price of water all together.
“There won’t be any summer surcharge going forward. It has been replaced by the year-round tiered rate structure,” he said. “Water and sewer rates are based on financial modeling that determines the amount of revenue required to cover our operating expenses, capital infrastructure spending, the cost to repair and maintain our infrastructure and our debt service. All of our costs are paid for by the charges that we bill our customers as we are 100 percent self funded. There are currently no plans to change the rates that were approved through 2015 back in March of 2009.”
The approved rate resolution implemented by the Board of Commissioners is available on the county Web site.
As for the ongoing water war and a potential resolution coming in 2010, Frank said, “We are supporting the Governor’s efforts for congressional authorization, in the tri-state negotiations, the Governor’s Task Force on Contingency Planning, and in our own legal appeal.”
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