Rising Water Bills
How and why...
Everything is going up in price. Inflation persists… and many local residents are complaining about the monthly cost of their water utility bills.
When you think about the state of Oregon, you would assume water resources are abundant. We have countless rivers, waterfalls, rainforests, mountain lakes, and snow-capped mountain ranges. But an interesting fact many people don’t know is that, when ranking all 50 U.S. states by the percentage of land covered by water, Oregon ranks only 31st at 2.40%. We actually rank below the state of Texas.
How Are We Billed
Our current residential utility schedule uses a fixed monthly water charge, plus inclining block volumetric rates that vary by pressure zone, alongside separate wastewater and stormwater charges.
For a single-family meter, the fixed monthly charges are $24.60 for water, $25.57 for wastewater, and $12.26 for stormwater. Water usage is billed in hundred-cubic-foot units (hcf), with 1 hcf equal to 748 gallons.
The first 7 hcf are billed at $2.70 - $3.27 per hcf, depending on pressure zone, then rise in higher blocks. Wastewater is billed at $4.07 per hcf, the sewer charge is capped at the prior winter average or actual use, whichever is lower.
Using the city’s billing method, the illustrative combined water + wastewater + stormwater bill is about:
This probably makes you wonder how many gallons of water you use each month as a way to lower your water bill. Another question you might ask is how the city could reduce its utility rates. Quite honestly, it’s not that simple. This is not a for-profit business.
How Prices Have Risen
Corvallis’s average-account utility charges rose sharply in the recent period. On the city’s own average-residential account charts, the water component increased from $28.66 in 2022 to $40.82 in 2026, a rise of about 42 percent.
The combined average-account water + wastewater + stormwater total increased from $78.77 in 2022 to $103.09 in 2026, about 31 percent.
The City of Corvallis water utility is a publicly owned municipal utility operated by the city government. That means the utility is intended to be “self-supporting,” with customer bills used to cover expenses. It is not a for-profit system. In other words, rising costs are not designed to gouge consumers. Instead, rates are structured to cover the operational costs of running and maintaining the utility.
This should indicate that the 31% increase over four years means operational costs have risen by a similar percentage.
The city says utility rates have recently gone up because of costs that include:
Daily operations and staff
Water treatment and testing
Maintenance and repairs
Replacing aging pipes and infrastructure
Debt payments on past projects
Required state and federal upgrades
You can unpack some of these specific costs more in terms of the general economic inflation we have been experiencing. Daily operations and staff (labor rates have increased), maintenance and repairs (material costs have increased), debt payment on past projects (interest rates have increased).
Being a not-for-profit public utility facing rising costs, there is still one surefire way to offset those increases and lower your monthly bill: use less water. After all, Oregon only ranks 31st in terms of water availability.
Do you have a story for The Inquirer? Email: editor@corvallisnow.com
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