While Taylor may have enough water for the next 30 years, getting the supply to customers is becoming more expensive.
On Thursday, the City Council reviewed a presentation that would increase water rates for the upcoming fiscal year, with experts saying costs will continue to rise annually.
Taylor residential water customers already pay the highest rates in the area, second only to Pflugerville, officials said.
“Our infrastructure is extremely old so we just have a lot more maintenance costs,” said Councilman Kelly Cmerek. “That’s one thing that hurts us year after year.”
Though no action was taken at the Aug. 6 meeting, an ordinance amending the city’s water and wastewater rates will be submitted to the council in September for approval.
A presentation to the council in July by a Brazos River Authority official indicated Taylor has ample water supplies from Granger Lake and other sources for the next three decades, even with expected growth.
The recommendation for rate increases Aug. 6 was presented by Grady Reed of HDR Engineering.
According to Reed, customers who use less than 2,500 gallons per month would not see an increase. The average single-family household in Taylor uses 5,300 gallons per month. The change would mean a $2.21 monthly increase in the average residential customer’s city utility bill.
Commercial customers will face larger increases. A business customer using 15,000 gallons a month would see a $12.82 monthly increase. Average commercial consumption is 19,000 gallons per month.
A chart presented by Reed showed proposed annual rate bumps that would increase the average residential water rate by $30 over the next five years.
No increase is proposed to the wastewater rate.
When asked why Round Rock and Cedar Park have water rates less than half of what Taylor residents pay, Reed said he believed it was due to the distance from the water source and the amount of pipeline needed to bring water into the city.
He also noted while Taylor has the second-highest residential water bills, they have the sixth-highest commercial bills.
“Some of these other cities, especially Hutto and Kyle, they’ve placed a lot more of a burden onto their commercial customers than Taylor has. So that’s a good thing for (Taylor’s) commercial customers. It does keep their cost down a little bit,” Reed said.
According to city documents, the rate increase model reflects the full cost of providing water and wastewater services to existing and future customers and covers a five-year outlook.
At its July 27 meeting, the council approved a water and wastewater master plan presented by HDR that recommends capital improvement projects totaling $300 million to $330 million over the next five to 10 years and another $390 million to $410 million over the next 10 to 15 years.
The plan was created to help Taylor identify future water demands and develop capital improvement plans to support current users and future customers.
The engineers estimate Taylor’s 20-year growth projections will require another $580 million in capital investment as the city will have to bring another wastewater treatment plan online and develop expanded water transmission and distribution lines. Data provided by HDR shows the city uses about 3 million gallons of water per day.
They project that total will increase to 7.59 million gallons per day soon because of “significant industrial demands.”
