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WEST JORDAN — Thousand of Salt Lake-area businesses and residents will pay a bit more for water use if a new proposal is adopted.
The Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District is set to submit a plan that includes an average rate increase of about 4 percent for the majority of its wholesale customers and around 3.8 percent for retail customers, said Richard Bay, the district's general manager.
The district is a political subdivision of the state that provides water to cities, improvement districts and retail customers within Salt Lake County.
Wholesale customers include municipalities Bluffdale, Draper, Herriman, Midvale, Riverton, South Jordan, South Salt Lake City and West Jordan, along with the Granger-Hunter Improvement District, Kearns Improvement District, Magna Water District, Taylorsville-Bennion Improvement District and the White City Improvement District. Commercial wholesale clients include Hexcel Corp., the Utah Department of Corrections, Waterpro Inc. and Willowcreek Country Club.
Contracted agencies include the Metropolitan Water District of Salt Lake and Sandy, while retail service is also provided to about 8,600 residential and nonresidential customers across the county, Bay explained.
“We’ve adjusted water rates up each of the last seven years,” he said. “The average rate adjustment for the last 10 years has been 3.8 percent.”
Despite the annual increases, the district still has some of the lowest water rates in the region, Bay said.
“We’re a public agency, and our marching orders are to provide service at cost,” he said. “We can’t artificially raise rates.”
"Our marching orders are to provide service at cost. We can’t artificially raise rates.” - Richard Bay, district general manager
The driving force for the yearly increases has been inflation due primarily to cost components of current operation and maintenance, Bay said. The second driver is the agency’s capital improvements program, he added.
“The population of our service area is growing so fast that we’re having to develop new water sources rapidly,” Bay explained. “Each water supply is more distant from Salt Lake County and requires more extensive infrastructure to import it, treat it and to make it available.”
Because new water development costs are so high, conservation has become critically important to the agency’s planning and operations, he said.
“We’re trying to accomplish a goal of 25 percent reduction in per-person water use in our service area from the year 2000 through 2025,” Bay said.
So far, the agency is at about two-thirds of its target, he noted.
“We’re going to keep pressing forward, and we’re confident that by 2025 we’ll make it,” Bay said.
If the annual plan is approved next month, the new rates would take effect July 1. E-mail: jlee@deseretnews.com Twitter: JasenLee1
