Water bills are going down

The average Niagara Falls resident’s water bill will go down $25.70 this year after city council passed water and wastewater rates Tuesday. The decrease — down 2.8 per cent from 2016 — is based on the average consumer with an annual water consumption of 180 cubic metres. The decrease is an estimated $19.60 for waste water and $6.10 for tap water, for a total $25.70.

“It’s a very good news story,” said finance director Todd Harrison.

“Hopefully this trend continues and we’ll be able to do this again next year.”

The new rates come into effect April 1.

Niagara Falls ratepayers will pay an average $868.61 total a year for 180 cubic metres of water and waste water.

Harrison said the city has 470 kilometres of water mains and 427 kilometres of sewer mains, up from 375 kilometres of water mains and 351 kilometres of sewer mains in 2002.

“We’ve seen significant growth in the infrastructure that we’ve had to deal with,” he said.

Harrison said the city has done a “good job” of containing its spending. “We controlled our costs and we’re up in our percentage of billed water, it’s gone up a marginal amount, so we’re actually in pretty good shape,” he said. Harrison said the municipality has seen an improvement in the water loss ratio it has seen in previous years. “We’ve had new accounts, too, because of the growth in the city, so on the fixed charge we’ve had relatively the same type of costs and we’ve had more accounts.” He said the city has also seen benefits from shifting some of the burden from fixed charges to variable charges. “We’ve been able to do that because we’ve gone away from basically a 56-44 (variable to fixed) to 60-40 (variable to fixed).”

Coun. Joyce Morocco said the city is on the “right path” with its rates.

“This is the first time in a long time that we’re reducing the rates,” she said.

Council was also told the municipality’s drinking water is clean and safe. Staff test the water for various chemicals on a regular basis and follow strict sampling protocols. A drinking water system summary report and overview presented to council confirmed the city is operating in accordance with all current legislation and is taking appropriate measures to guarantee the safety of the drinking water quality to its consumers. A Ministry of Environment inspection gave the city’s drinking water quality management system a 100 per cent compliance rating. A conformance audit was conducted on the city’s drinking water, which yielded zero non-conformances. In 2016, the municipality’s environmental services department responded to 71 water main breaks, down from 80 in 2015.