Another year, another rate hike for Toledoans and residents of suburbs who buy Toledo water.
In 2013, then-Mayor Mike Bell pushed through a plan for phasing in water-rate increases over the following five years.
The plan will cost the average household more each year until 2018, when it will top out at an additional $125 annually compared to the 2013 average.
The most recent rate increase, which will affect roughly 500,000 customers, began Jan. 1. It’s the fourth of four straight 13.2 percent Jan. 1 increases, to be followed next year by a 4.5 percent hike.
The increases will pay for more than $500 million in repairs and upgrades mandated by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for the city’s water-treatment plant. The average residential customer uses about 3,000 cubic feet of water per quarter.
Water rates for most suburbanites will increase, but not by the same rates because some communities absorbed the increase and have different surcharges tacked onto residents’ water bills.
Toledo Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson, who will seek re-election in 2017, said she does not know if another rate hike will come in 2019.
“I can’t answer what will happen after 2018,” Mayor Hicks-Hudson said. “The current rate increase will provide for funding for the ozonation and other upgrades, but it is my hope we will not have to do other increases.”
Although the mayor said she hopes rates would remain flat beyond 2018, Ed Moore, public utilities director, in 2015 said the city would have to consider more water-rate increases to pay for a heavier load of chemicals needed to annually treat drinking water.
Council was asked in mid-2015 to add $3 million to the $6 million spent by October of that year for chemicals at the Collins Park Water Treatment Plant.
Toledo City Council earlier this month approved about $61.43 million in projects for the Collins Park Water Treatment Plant. That included $6 million for a planned ozone harmful algal bloom treatment facility.
Among the upgrades mandated by the state EPA is construction of a 40-million-gallon redundant treatment unit. It is needed to take the system’s 80-million-gallon treatment unit, which was built in 1941, offline for repairs.
The Ohio EPA called the condition of the plant’s roof above the flocculation and filter buildings a major problem. The city in 2013 approved borrowing $15 million for that project.
Sylvania water users will have a 20 percent increase on their water bills in 2017.
The hike includes the increased Toledo rate, but also positions Sylvania to move toward building its own plant to be used either for a regional water system or an independent Sylvania system once the city’s contract with Toledo expires in 2028, Sylvania Mayor Craig Stough said.
The one-year Sylvania rate hike affects more than 7,000 homes and businesses in the city and parts of Sylvania Township. The average resident’s water bill will increase from $44.50 to $53.39 on monthly water bills.
Perrysburg City Administrator Bridgette Kabat said the city did not pass all of the 13.2 percent increases from Toledo on to residents.
“When I came on board in 2012, [Toledo] passed at the end of 2012 the rates for 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 and, when those rates were put together with projected estimates on the cost of the water purchase, the [Perrysburg water] department had budgeted 9 percent increases each year,” she said. “Just a couple months later, Toledo passed their rates. We did not go back with council to redo this to capture that increase.”
Blade staff writers Sarah Elms and Zack Lemon contributed to this report.
Contact Ignazio Messina at: imessina@theblade.com or 419-724-6171 or on Twitter @IgnazioMessina.
First Published January 2, 2017, 5:00 a.m.
