Black Diamond residents may be tempted to turn the tap off a little quicker after they receive their next water and sewer bill.
During its regular meeting on Feb. 18, Black Diamond Town council approved an increase in its water rates that will have the average homeowner consuming 15 m3 a month paying an additional $6.75 for water and $5.62 for sewer monthly.
This means the average monthly cost for water use in a single family household will be $49.50 and $40 for sewer.
“Cost of operations have gone up, the cost of everything has been going up,” said Black Diamond Mayor Sharlene Brown. “It does cause a hardship to many residents, there is no getting around that. It’s an increase and none of us are happy with the increase.”
Council agreed on increasing the fixed rate for water from $33 to $36 in a two-month period, and increasing the variable rate from $1.75 m3 to $2.10 m3.
The fixed rate for sewer will now be $80 for two months, up from the previous cost of $68.76 for the same time period among single residential homes.
“When we add them all together it’s not a minimal increase in the water and sewer rate,” Brown said.
Residents last saw an increase in their water bills in 2013 while their sewer bills increased last in 2003, Brown said.
“That’s not normal and that won’t be normal going forward,” she said. “It could go up every year.”
The Town of Black Diamond has been accessing its water from the Turner Valley water treatment plant for almost two years after it lost its own plant in the 2013 flood.
Luckily, the cost to tie the town into its neighbouring water system was covered by disaster recovery and flood erosion funding from the Province, Brown said.
“One of the saving graces is that we did not have to build our own water treatment plant,” she said. “It would have cost us $11 million to build our own treatment facility. The flood saved us a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of time.”
The Town worked with Calgary engineering consultant Urban Systems to help determine the rate Black Diamond must pay for potable water.
Brown said the Town’s annual cost to access water from the Turner Valley water treatment plant through the Quad Water Regional Partnership, a collaboration between the Towns of Turner Valley and Black Diamond, MD of Foothills and eventually the Village of Longview, is $650,000.
“We are doing full cost accounting on our water from the time that we draw water from the wells, put it through the system and deliver it to your house, we are charging for every piece of the operations on there,” Brown said. “It’s the full cost of what it costs for us to operate a water treatment facility. When you go to full cost accounting every piece of operations needs to be accounted for.”
Brown suspects the increased rates in water and sewer may prompt people to conserve water.
“They can control how much water they use and how many times they flush,” she said.
Brown added that millions of dollars worth of upgrades are needed to be made to the sewage treatment plant to meet new federal requirements due to legislation changes.
She said a portion of the sewage rate increase will go towards those anticipated costs.
