Community Corner

City Seeks to Hike Water Rates 22 Percent

Rate increase would help fund debt service for construction at the Lawton Valley Water Treatment Plant and improvements to Station One Water Treatment Facility.

The city's Utilities Department will be sending notices to residents by April 1 to notify them of a potential rate increase.

The city is hoping to raise about $3 million to help pay for its debt service for the construction of the new Lawton Valley Water Treatment Plant and improvements to the Station 1 Water Treatment Plant.

It would be the third and final request for a rate increase associated with the debt service.

Along with the rate increase, the Newport Water Division wants to start billing its customers monthly. As it stands, residents are billed quarterly.

To go with monthly billing, the existing base charges "must be adjusted for monthly billing," city officials said in a release, but doesn't mean it would be going up.

The new rates would be effective July 1 and subject to approval by the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission.

The notice that residents will receive states that the annual increase for the average customer who uses 60,000 gallons per year would be $119.60 per year, or 22.1 percent. The example given is an annual bill of $540.28 increasing to $659.88.


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