Suez wants Boise-area customers to pay a lot more for water. Here’s how much
Suez Water Idaho is asking the Idaho Public Utilities Commission for a 22.3% rate increase.
The average residential customer would pay an extra $6.61 per month, while bills for businesses would increase an average $23.51 per month. Company revenue would rise by $10.2 million per year.
Suez, a French-owned company that serves 98,000 customers in Boise and surrounding Ada County, wants to increase its rate of return from 4.1% to 7.5%. In a filing with the Public Utilities Commission, the company said that would be a “fair rate of return on Suez Water’s investment in property used and useful in rendering water service.”
The money would also help offset increased operating expenses and costs associated with plant additions, the filing said.
Suez last received a rate increase in 2015. It sought a 13.2% price increase. The PUC approved 6%.
Suez asks the PUC to find that the company’s current rates are “unjust, unreasonable and insufficient” to provide a fair rate of return.
The company is seeking to have the higher rates effective Oct. 31, but spokesperson Jane Kreller said she doesn’t expect the application to be approved until April. If that’s the case, customers would not see a difference in their bills until May, she said. Customers would pay the new rate then, and it would not be retroactive, Kreller said.
“We are particularly sensitive to the financial pressure faced by many of our customers at this time,” Marshall Thompson, Suez’s general manager for Idaho, said in a news release. “That is why we have been careful to bring projects to the community that not only create long-term, greater resiliency in the system, but are also an exceptional value.”
Suez said it recently completed $115 million in upgrades to the water company’s Boise system. The improvements made over five years include new pipes, new pumping stations to ensure adequate water pressure and new treatment technologies to maintain clean water.
They include 65 miles of new water mains throughout Boise, Meridian and Eagle. Among those, the $3 million Spurwing Pipeline in West Boise, Meridian and Eagle provided water, enhanced pressure and fire protection capability.
Suez said it spent $3.9 million for a new million-gallon tank at Sunset Peak to provide water to customers in the Boise Foothills and replaced the control system at one of its water treatment plants.
The company also invested $7.5 million in a state-of-the-art meter reading system. Customers will be able to track water consumption hour by hour and set conservation goals online.
