DWA increases rates

The Desert Water Agency plans on increasing rates by four dollars per year, on average, starting January 2017 until 2020. “If you receive a notice in the mail you will be impacted one way or another,” said Ashley Metzger, DWA’s Outreach and Conservation Manager. The rate proposal comes as pipelines dating back to the 1920s need to be replaced. In 2015 DWA repaired nearly 500 leaks, resulting in 12 million gallons of water lost. Some customers are willing to do whatever it takes to conserve water and protect infrastructures. “If raising the price is what it takes, then we’re just going to have to buckle up and take it,” said one DWA customer. Another DWA customer, Donna Chaban-Delmas is protesting the rate increase and says the agency should look to other funds for the pipeline replacement. “Perhaps they need to rethink the salary structure of the higher executives as well as cut back in internal expenses in order to figure out how to keep those rates down,” said Chaban-Delmas. The DWA encourages customer input and is holding a public hearing on Dec. 15 to further educate customers about the increase and to get their feed back. “At that hearing we will look at all of the protests that we’ve received and if we have received more than 50 percent of our customers have protests, our board won’t even consider the rate increase. However, if we get less protests, our board will consider increasing the rates in January,” said Metzger.