City’s water costs to rise with Northern Water rates
Fort Collins residents’ water bills aren’t expected to rise immediately while the city faces a potential 70 percent hike to the cost it pays for about half of its water.
The Northern Water Conservancy District’s board of directors will begin deliberations on Thursday to decide how to adjust the water management company’s rates for the first time since 1998. Regardless of the rate structure the board settles on, it will increase the amount Fort Collins Utilities pays for water received through the project by 70 percent in 2016, said Donnie Dustin, a utilities water resources manager.
The series of connected reservoirs operated by Northern Water provides about half of the city’s water. The other half flows down the Poudre River.
Dustin doesn’t expect the increase to noticeably impact Fort Collins Utilities customers’ water bills. Utilities is in the middle of a two-year budget cycle, and potential changes have already been factored in, Dustin added.
Northern Water’s current structure for charging farmers, irrigators and cities for water is not sustainable, officials say, and could result in doubled and tripled water costs for customers within five years. The district has pitched three potential solutions, which will be discussed during a May 1 public meeting.
A decision on the rate structure could be made then but is likely to be postponed until the board’s June meeting, employee Jerry Gibbens said.
The rate changes will affect the cost of water coming off the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, a network of basins and reservoirs connecting Western Slope water to Front Range communities. The Bureau of Reclamation owns the project, but Northern Water is responsible for allotting water to customers across Northern Colorado.
The city owns 18,855 units of Colorado-Big Thompson Project water, 6,052 of which have rates fixed at $1.50 per acre foot, Dustin said. The remaining 12,803 units, which go for about $28 per acre foot, will likely double in cost when Northern Water rates increase in 2016.
Utilities is advocating for a gradual increase in rates over a period of years, versus a sudden increase, Dustin said.
The three options for Northern Water’s rate change are:
• Keep the existing structure, in which irrigation customers are given water rates based on their average ability to pay, with municipalities making up the difference in cost of service. This option means high rates for cities and relatively low rates for irrigators. This could mean a cost of more than $100 per acre foot for municipalities.
• Center both irrigation and municipal customer rates around the cost of delivering each acre foot of water. Irrigation rates would cover the base cost of service, while municipal rates would cover the balance of the total net cost of service.
• Reduce the disparity between irrigator and municipal rates by basing both rates off the net cost of service. This structure would mean an average cost of $5 to $7 per acre foot.
Comment on the rate study
Public comment on Northern Water’s rate study is open in advance of Thursday’s meeting to consider potential rate changes.
• Email: RateStudy@northernwater.org
• Mail: Jerry Gibbens, 220 Water Ave., Berthoud, CO 80513
• Phone: (970) 622-2299
Read a summary of the study and proposed changes to rates: http://noconow.co/nwrates. For more information, visit www.northernwater.org.