ACC Commissioners last week passed - with minor changes - a “conservation rate structure” intended to reduce summer spikes in water demand. The new rate structure goes into effect July 1. After that, water customers who use over 25 percent more than their usual amount in any month will pay more than double for that extra water. (Each customer’s base water demand will be determined from a “winter average” of water used in the four months beginning December 2005, or - for industrial customers - the customer’s 12-month average beginning July 2005.)

Bowing to criticism from several commissioners that the new rate plan would punish the very people who conserved water during that time frame in 2005 and 2006, ACC Manager Alan Reddish suggested a 3000-gallon minimum rate - a sort of “deductible” - be applied when calculating the “winter average.” That means people who didn’t use much water during that time (or perhaps were out of town) would be given a 3000-gallon base demand rate (which might be typical of a household of a couple of people, Public Utilities Director Gary Duck told Flagpole.) That change was included in the plan.

The rate plan was OK’d by a water conservation committee of citizens and county staffers, but some local landscapers and nursery owners criticized it as detrimental to their industry. “We do support water conservation rates,” Stuart Cofer (owner of Cofer’s Home and Garden Center) told commissioners. But “this is the wrong way to make an irrigation system water-smart and efficient,” Cofer said. Encouraging homeowners to use water-saving devices like drip irrigation, pressure-reducers, or rain sensors (to turn off water when it rains) could do that, landscapers advocated. A last-minute proposal by Commissioner Carl Jordan - a consistent critic of the plan that passed - was also discussed by commissioners. Jordan’s plan would simply charge higher rates to larger water users (Oconee county uses such “block pricing”). But block pricing was rejected by the ACC water conservation committee, because larger families would pay a higher rate for water. Jordan’s plan would also have kicked up rates during summer months when river flows are lowest.

Industrial and institutional water users - like UGA and the two local poultry-processing plants, which on some days account for a quarter of the county’s total water demand - would also pay more under a block pricing plan, but committee chair Kathy Hoard said such large users already try to cut their costs by saving water. At present, industrial users pay 14 percent less than residential users for water, but those rates will be equalized in a year or two, utilities department staffers say. Some commissioners wanted more time to consider Jordan’s proposal, but Commissioner Hoard pointed out that commissioners have been considering conservation rates since 2003. “We had numerous meetings, and the end result was, nobody was happy with any plan,” she said. Besides, Manager Reddish pointed out, the county needs additional revenue soon to cover expansion of sewage treatment plants (and that money comes from water bills).

John Huie

jphuie@athens.net