UARB hears CBRM pitch for water rate hikes
New water rate structures for the Cape Breton Regional Municipality could be in place by October.
The CBRM has asked the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board for increases that will total 21.1 per cent over three years to ensure the utility does not continue to experience an operating deficit.
The case for the increase was heard by UARB board member Richard Melanson in council chambers Tuesday morning.
Council voted in favour of applying for increases in February because the current rate structure isn’t raising enough revenue to cover the cost of operating the utility.
Under the original application, in the first year the quarterly water bill for the average residential customers would go from $102.81 to $118.03, an increase of 14.8 per cent.
That increase would be followed in subsequent years by an additional three per cent to $121.61 and then by 3.3 per cent to $125.58.
No members of the public
registered to speak at Tuesday’s hearing. As a result, a planned additional evening session on the rate increase was cancelled.
There was just one letter of comment submitted prior to the hearing.
Among concerns from the letter writer, whose name was redacted, was that an increase would come because “we are not using enough water to cover costs.”
“Maybe if we don’t need as much water now then we don’t need the amount of manpower to run it,” according to the letter writer.
Melanson asked the group
representing the CBRM that included consultants Gerald Isenor and Blaine Rooney, and Mike MacKeigan, the CBRM’s water utilities manager, for a response on behalf of the letter writer.
He was told that decreased consumption does not translate to cost savings.
Equipment needs maintenance as it ages, and it is the same pipes that still suffer things like breakages, no matter how much water goes through them, according to Isenor.
Melanson himself asked why a rate increase was not requested earlier in light of the
fact that the last one was in 2013.
“Predominately the political will wasn’t there to deal with rates from a rate increase,” MacKeigan told him.
“There was always the assumption some of the shortfall could be addressed with changes to operations to improve efficiencies, as opposed to higher water rates.”
Initially, the CBRM had hoped to have the first increase to begin in April but must now refile the application with a new suggested start date.
On Tuesday, they requested July 1 but Melanson suggested that was too tight of a timeline to review the case.
A second change to the application is related to a modified depreciation calculation specific to two small tanks within the water utility.
MacKeigan said it will have an almost non-exist impact on the proposed rate structure.