Lately my water/sewer bill from the City of Phoenix has gone up drastically.  I decided to take an active role in reducing my water consumption.  I eliminated all grass area on my property and was expecting my water/sewer bill from the City of Phoenix to drop.  I reduced my water-consumption by about 1/3, and expected the bill to drop as well; it did not drop much.  Why?

I contacted City of Phoenix and starting to ask question with respect to how the water/sewer fees are calculated.

 The following is the explanation I received from the City of Phoenix with respect to how the sewer fee is calculated:

  1. Add up units of water used on your bills you received in January, February and March.  Divide by 3 (this will give you the average water usage for Jan/Feb/March)
  2. Multiply that by the sewer flow which is dependent on property type (right now a single family home is .90): This is your fixed charge.
  3. Multiply that by $2.3056
  4. Add $1
  5. Add environmental fees - which is the  the fixed charge (from step 2) multiplied by $0.5514

 

In follow-up questions I asked the following:

Money is collected from environmental fee, what is that used for? 

  • The response from the City of Phoenix: The environmental fee recovers the operation, maintenance and replacement costs to meet environmental regulations.

Question: What regulation? Is this federal regulation? Or is this a result of accepting federal money and the City have to comply with the conditions  attach to the federal money?

 

 The added $1: what is that for? 

  • The response from the City of Phoenix:  The fixed charge recovers the sewer portion of costs for customer services and preparing the monthly bill.

Question: Is the billing not part of the total operating cost?

 

How did the City arrive at the multiplier of $2.3056?  

  • The response from the City of Phoenix: This rate recovers the total operation and maintenance, debt service, indirect costs and capital outlay costs to provide wastewater services divided by the number of sewer treated units by customer class.

Questions: What is the total operating and maintenance cost associated with the sewer?  How much debt does the City have and how much of the debt is associated with the sewer system?

 

How does the City arrive at the multiplier of .90 for a single home?  

- The response for the City of Phoenix: This is the volume of sewer that makes its way to the sewer system.

 

Question: What happened to the .1 (10%) of the sewer that does not make it to the sewer system?

 

Once I receive a response from  the City; I will update this posting