NORWALK, Conn. — A model is being sought to make the price of using water in Norwalk more fair.
You could leave the spigot on all day and face no penalty, given Norwalk’s flat fee for water usage, Common Council Finance Committee Chairman Bruce Kimmel (D-At Large) said recently in advocating for some sort of change.
“When you think about it, in light of some of the things going on around the country, the change in climate, what’s going on in California, we don’t have a single thing that we use an incentive to conserve,” Kimmel said at the April 9 Finance Committee meeting.
Norwalk is one of the few communities in Connecticut that has a flat rate for water consumption, Department of Public Works Operations Manager Lisa Burns said.
An exhaustive analysis done in 2009 “demonstrated pretty clearly” that most residents would be on the losing end of the stick if the city switched from a flat fee for water usage to one based on consumption, because the current rate structure is designed to favor residences, Finance Director Thomas Hamilton said.
“If we were to move to a totally consumption based system, preponderance of residents would pay more,” Hamilton said.
Kimmel’s point was that there might be some way to provide “some kind of relief,” so “if a household was below a certain amount could there be an incentive for them to get a cut in their rate? Just to have a little bit more equity in the system.”
No one has ever discussed that, Burns said.
Water usage is actually down over the past decade due to water saving appliances, such as low-flow toilets and dishwashers and front-loading washing machines, Burns said. Reducing water usage wouldn’t mean a cost savings, as it costs the same amount to run the sewage treatment plant with 12 million gallons a day as it would with 13 million, she said.
“You have this base cost, so what happens is the consumption-based component increases so the revenue you need based on the flow, it’s just a different multiplier,” Burns said.
Regarding Kimmel’s idea of making consumption a component of the calculation for a bill, “The cost and effort of trying to administer that would be probably more work and effort than just going to straight consumption system, so we would need staff to administer that program,” Hamilton said.
“Even if you are going to just say it’s going to be based on consumption if you are some percentage below the average, that would imply or suggest that we would need consumption data for every single property in the city and we would have to analyze that data,” Hamilton said. “It’s not that it can’t be done I’m just suggesting that it’s probably a big undertaking.”
Kimmel said he wasn’t saying it would be simple.
“I’m just saying when you start to look at it, forget the dollars and cents, I’m saying when you start to look at it in terms of consumption, conservation, equity and things like that, we would lose the debate,” Kimmel said. “The only thing we have to deal with here is cost to implement something. What we have here is a situation which I think is not fair and not good for the environment, but because of the costs involved we are keeping it the way it is, basically.”
Council President Jerry Petrini (R-District D) suggested using senior tax relief as a model, giving seniors a break on their water bill.
The Water Pollution Control Authority should think about it, Kimmel said, suggesting that the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM) be consulted. DPW Chief Hal Alvord agreed.
“We have one of the lowest residential flat fees in the state,” Alvord said. “There is inequity in what you say. We’ll take a look and ask CCM to do some research for us and see what we can find out.”
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