Screen Shot of Director of Finance/Treasurer Valerie Nesbitt Council video

Water Rates Up 3.2 per cent; wastewater up 2.8 per cent

Budget includes $2.77 million for water and $2.9 million for wastewater.

Bulk water charge increases by 18 cents to $3.48 per cubic metre.

Article by John Campbell

Trent Hills - Water does flow up – or at least its rates do, to cover the cost of its treatment and distribution.
In Trent Hills, the rates for 2022 will be going up by 3.2 per cent; for wastewater the increase amounts to 2.8 per cent.

For close to 98 per cent of the municipality’s 2,800 customers, the new water service charges and consumption rates amount to an increase of just 92 cents a month to $29.85, according to a staff report prepared by Director of Finance/Treasurer Valerie Nesbitt.

The same majority of customers will see an increase of $1.40 a month in their wastewater service charges and consumption rates.

Depending on the amount of water consumed, the impact on a consumer’s monthly bill could be anywhere from an additional $1.22 per 10 cubic metres (to $42.45), to $1.37 more per 15 cubic metres ($48.75).
For the same representative group, the increase in wastewater costs will be anywhere from $2 more a month, to $72.29, to an extra $2.30 a month, or $83.04.

Combining the two increases in water and wastewater costs, households, on average, will pay $38.64 more a year, based on customer usage of 10 cubic metres per month, or as much as $44.04 extra a year, at 15 cubic metres per month.

There’s nothing surprising about the rate increases as they were laid out for the period 2020 to 2029 based on recommendations contained in a water and wastewater rate study prepared by Watson & Associates Economists Ltd. that council approved in February 2020.

What’s different each year is how the money collected is allocated for operating and capital expenditures, along with transfers to help finance projects over a long-term period.

The budgets approved by council at its Dec. 14 meeting were set at $2.77 million for water and $2.9 million for wastewater.

The municipality will spend $662,000 on capital improvements to its water system. More than half will go toward upgrades to the Hastings standpipe ($287,000) and the clarifier at the Campbellford treatment plant ($100,000); the balance will be used to replace the Park Street water main on Park Street in Hastings ($200,000) and an emergency generator at Warkworth $75,000).

The municipality has earmarked $431,000 for capital improvements to its collection and treatment of wastewater.
Trent Hills will begin charging customers who are in arrears $25 to have the amount owed transferred to their tax account.

It’s also raising its bulk water charge by 18 cents to $3.48 per cubic metre.

Nesbitt told council in November the amount was arrived at by surveying what a handful of other municipalities charge and then choosing “to be somewhere in the middle of that.”