Georgetown raising rates by $15 monthly to pay to reserve water from aquifer
The Georgetown City Council has approved raising water and wastewater rates beginning on April 1 to help pay for the city's right to buy groundwater from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer.
The increase is expected to add about $15 to the monthly utility bill of the average single-family residential household, which uses about 10,000 gallons of water per month, officials said in a news release on Thursday.
The council in August approved paying $10.2 million to the EPCOR Water Utility Company — which builds, owns and operates water transmission systems to reserve water from the aquifer.
The reservation agreement reserves the city’s right to buy groundwater from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer as it negotiates a long-term water supply contract with the company to meet its needs through 2050, the release said. It said the contract would allow 62.5 million gallons per day to be piped west from Robertson County to Williamson County by 2030.
"The cost to deliver the water will come later in a water supply contract," said Keith Hutchinson, a city spokesman. "We aim to have that contract completed in 2025."
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“Georgetown has enough water to meet current and near-term demand, but we need to increase our water supply by the end of this decade and that requires us to plan and invest for that now,” Mayor Josh Schroeder said. “We’re doing all we can to hold costs down, but the bottom line is that the era of cheap abundant water is over in all of Texas — not just for Georgetown.”
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The Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer runs through 66 Texas counties extending from the border of Louisiana to the border of Mexico in a wide band adjacent to and northwest of the Gulf Coast Aquifer, according to the Texas Water Development Board.
Georgetown Utility will not run out of water in 2030 but would most likely have to impose systemwide water restrictions on irrigation year-round with even tighter restrictions during a drought if the city does not get water from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, the release said.
About 70% of Georgetown's residential water is used for irrigation during the summer when temporary water restrictions are sometimes imposed, officials said.
Georgetown Utility has a 400-square-mile service area that extends far outside its city limits. It serves an estimated population of 150,000, Hutchinson has said. The utility is projected to add about 5,000 new customers a year from 2024 to 2042, the release said.
"The Georgetown Water Utility has experienced significant cost increases in recent years due to inflation, higher interest rates, aging facilities, and the need to increase its water supply and resiliency," according to the release. It said the city began doing annual rate studies with a five-year outlook in 2022 and expects water rates to increase annually for the near future.
Recent annual rate increases have helped cover expenses, including rehabilitating two aging wastewater treatment plants, expanding the utility’s water treatment capacity, and adding backup power sources to treatment plants and pump stations as recently required by the Texas Legislature, according to the release.
Learn more about the city’s water rates here.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Georgetown raising rates to pay to reserve water from aquifer
