Rates & Affordability

The American Water Works Association, National Association of Clean Water Agencies and Water Environment Federation have together produced a report that proposes a new approach for assessing community and household affordability for water services. The report, “Developing a New Framework for Household Affordability and Financial Capability AssessmentRead More

The American Water Works Association’s most recent Water and Wastewater Rate Survey reveals that average increases in drinking water and wastewater charges continue to outpace the rise in the U.S. Consumer Price Index. The 2019 rate survey is now available here. Between the 2016 and 2018 surveys,Read More

The deadline to submit an abstract for the 2019 Water Finance Conference is being extended to March 22. The 2019 event will be the fifth year for the Water Finance Conference and will be held Aug. 21-22 at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, D.C. TheRead More

By Jeff Hughes, Shadi Eskaf & Liz Harvell The relationship between water pricing and water use is more nuanced than basic economic theory on supply and demand suggests. That’s what the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (EFC) found inRead More

By Andy McCartney Personal financial advisors often recommend that families should have enough money in an emergency fund to cover at least three to six months of living expenses. Corporations such as Microsoft, General Electric and Home Depot maintain excess operating funds for their ownRead More

As a public agency, being open and transparent is a primary goal for the Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD). These goals were recently rewarded when OCSD was acknowledged for its 2018 transparency efforts and budgeting process by the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). For theRead More

Nasdaq, along with Veles Water and WestWater Research, has announced the launch of the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index (NQH2O), the first of its kind water index that benchmarks the price of water in a way that supports price discovery and enables the creation ofRead More

By Prabha Kumar The ethos and expectations of the utility management, the administration, the rate-approving body and the ratepayers intersect during every utility’s rate setting and approval process. Municipal utilities, municipal authorities and investor-owned utilities that head down the rate setting path all need to effectivelyRead More

Great Lakes Water Authority’s WRAP Program Aims to Put Customers on a Path to Self-Sufficiency A widely-held viewpoint across the municipal water sector is that water distribution and sewage collection service is underpriced. Water and sewer authorities operate primarily with funding from rate increases butRead More

The National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA) have extended support for new legislation aimed at improving the affordability of water and wastewater service for low-income customers. Introduced led by Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) andRead More