Gas prices are up. Food prices are up. The basics are getting harder to afford. Depending on where you live, you might need to add another item to the list. Water. New Hampshire Public Radio’s Jon Greenberg has this look at what’s going on with water bills in the Granite State.
SFX water at Susanne’s sink/You generally wash dishes once a day?/ Yes, I do.
Susanne is 48. She’s divorced and lives by herself in a brand new mobile home in Exeter. She’s vigilant about her use of water.
CUT I don’t baths, I take quick showers. I don’t use my dishwasher, usually. Sometimes I do. I don’t water my lawn.
Susanne has good reason to be cautious. About a year ago, the town threatened to shut off her water. The bill that she had just received was for 150 dollars.
CUT And I had opened it up and I really did say to myself, I don’t know how I’m going to pay that.
Susanne, she prefers we not use her last name, lives on about 20,000 dollars a year working two jobs. She’s a manager at her local Stop and Shop and fills in at the Exeter Country Club serving food at special events. She’s frugal. She doesn’t own a car. She rides a bike or walks to get to where she needs to go. She balances her checkbook every night. She doesn’t see herself as a deadbeat, but during the winter heating season, she had to pick and choose among her bills. With water, it was easier to be late.
CUT: Some other ones I had to pay first. Like electricity, credit cards. When you fall behind on these things, it hurts your credit.
The town and Susanne worked out a payment plan. It spread out the pain, but still she saw her water bill go up 20% in a year. She wasn’t the only Exeter resident to fall behind. This spring, the number of households that got final shut off notices reached 80 – about double what it was the year before.
The town worker who had the job of sending out those letters, quit. Lynn Nash said she had few options to offer these people.
CUT I guess I didn’t want to be that person anymore, the person that shut peoples’ water off. These are the people I know who try to pay their bills because I’ve seen them in the past do it. And now they can’t. I don’t believe anyone thought this far ahead -- that it would be a problem.
WATER SFX
CUT In this building, it’s a little bit noisy, you hear the water cascading
Paul Roy is the chief operator at Exeter’s Water Treatment Plant. In the summer, about 1.8 million gallons a day pass through here. Moving that water is one reason Exeter’s water bills have gone up. This plant is an energy hog. It takes a lot of electricity to pump water and costs have gone up about 10 percent a year. On top of that, there are parts of this plant dating back to 1886. Repairs big and small are constantly underway.
Town manager, Russ Dean, says 4 years ago, the voters rejected a 16 million dollar plan to overhaul the town’s water system. Dean says the need remains.
CUT This plant is not going to last forever. We’re going to have to make a decision about where we go in the future and that’s going to have a cost associated with it. How much that is, we just don’t know at this point.
Dean says it’s difficult to insulate residents from the rising costs of providing water and sewer services. Since 2000, the average water bill statewide has gone up 25 percent. The picture could get worse. Rising population is pushing some facilities to their limits. In addition, many sewer treatment plants were built in the 1970’s and 80’s using federal grant money and they are reaching the end of their useful life. Without significant help from Washington again, the burden of replacing them will fall heavily on local communities.
Harry Stewart is director of the state’s Water Division. He says, no one should count on any relief soon.
CUT Certainly energy costs don’t look like they are leveling off and these facilities are energy intensive. So there’s going to be increasing rates for a five to ten year period.
Stewart says new facilities would be more energy efficient, but getting those plants would require a major investment. The last time the state tallied up the costs across all the towns and cities, the price tag was 800 million dollars.
For NHPR News, I’m Jon Greenberg.
