Fort Frances property owners’ bi-monthly sewer and water bills will be a little higher in 2007 after town council approved a two percent rate increase at a special meeting Friday at noon.
Operations and Facilities manager Doug Brown noted this will equal an increase of $14.16 for the average residential customer and $19.32 for flat rate commercial.
For metered commercial customers which use more than 55 cubic metres a month, the rate will mean an additional three cents per cubic metre of water used.
The rate increases are retroactive to Jan. 1, 2007, and customers should see their first bill this week for the months of January and February.
“The increase is basically equal to the rate of inflation for the year,” Mayor Roy Avis noted Friday.
He added sewer and water is a self-funded utility, and that the rates customers pay covers the town’s sewer and water capital projects and operating costs for 2007.
Any extra funds go to the town’s sewer and water reserves, which the mayor clarified are separate from the town’s other reserves—and that funds in them are used exclusively for sewer and water maintenance and improvements.
“Since Walkerton, there’s been a lot of change in the way the sewer and water services are delivered,” the mayor noted. “The government has more controls. There’s many regulations we have to operate under, and we do that very well.
“People in Fort Frances should know their water is some of the best water in Ontario.”
Brown said with the two percent increase, the town will have what’s needed to cover its $2.5 million in operating costs and $1.3 million in capital works projects this year, with an extra $78,000 going into the sewer and water reserves.
He noted after Friday’s meeting that the town currently has about $2.6 million in its sewer and water reserves, which is to be used for sewer and water-related emergencies.
Brown added about $1.3 million of this money also will be needed when the town begins to install water meters in all properties starting in 2010 (coinciding with the implementation of the Ministry of Energy’s “smart meters” for electricity).
“Water meters are going to be impacting the reserves in the next three years,” he explained. “They’ll probably have to be funded by the town, with the property owner where the meters are put in would pay so much per month.
“The same way it is with natural gas.”
What’s more, the town will have to think ahead about replacing the meters in time, as well.
“The meters only last 10 years. They’re mechanical,” said Brown. “Where electrical ones don’t lose their accuracy, with water meters, they slow down.
“In other words, over time, the meters register less water. The customer gets a deal but the town loses revenue.”
Brown estimated customers likely would pay for the cost of the initial meters over a five-year period, and then over the next five years, keep paying in anticipation of the replacement cost.
The sewer and water reserves also have to have some funds in them to cover the cost of replacing the town’s watermains—some of which date back to 1906.
“We are not replacing enough watermains. We can’t afford to replace them all at once—we’ve got other things right now,” said Brown. “So they’re going to be costly to replace in the future.”
Currently, added Brown, the town only is replacing the old cast iron watermains with PVC piping every time the town “opens up a road to fix sewer deficiencies.”
“We know there’s areas where the watermains have to be replaced. But basically, the sewers are directing where we’re doing it,” he explained.
Fort Frances Times
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