Your Next Denver Water Bill Will Be Higher

DENVER (CBS4) - The next water bill for Denver Water customers is going to be higher starting on Monday. Denver Water says rates should be $1 more compared to last year for the same amount of water usage.

The rate is going up a little more for customers outside of Denver: customers there can expect to see a rise of cost between $1.15 and $1.36.

The rate increase was adopted by the utility company back in October to take effect Jan. 20, 2020. It says the money will go towards funding a $1.3 billion capital plan that's needed to maintain and repair aging infrastructure. Money will also go towards building a new water treatment facility, replacement piping and 140 other projects.

So how does this rate increase stack up to past years? Denver Water data shows revenue rate increases have been less stable going back to 2009. Between those five years, billing surges were 9%, 6%, 10.4%, 5.5% and 2.5%, respectively. To stabilize the increase there was a structural change in 2016 keeping that uptick to 3.8% followed by two years of 3% increases. That following year, from 2017 to 2018, customers living in Denver saw an average monthly increase of about $1.17 a month. Taking that into consideration, the increase set to start Monday is in line with the recent past year's increases.