Ascension water rate hike approved
GONZALES — Residential and commercial customers of Ascension Water Co. will begin seeing a newly approved increase in water rates of slightly more than 19 percent on bills next month, officials said Friday.
On Wednesday in Pineville, the Louisiana Public Service Commission unanimously backed the increases for Ascension Water, a key private water provider in East Ascension with 22,702 customers. The company is a subsidiary of Baton Rouge Water Co.
“Bills starting to appear in the mailboxes in the first part of March will be representative of the increase that the Public Service Commission granted,” Hays Owen, vice president and secretary of Ascension Water, said Friday.
Commission spokesman Colby Cook said the commission backed without change a settlement that the water company and PSC staff had reached last month.
In its rate request in August, Ascension Water said it needed the increases to keep up with the parish’s continued growth and the cost of retrofitting existing subdivisions with fire hydrants and support infrastructure called for in a 20-year franchise agreement with Ascension Parish dating from 2006.
Owen has said the company spent $18.7 million on water infrastructure since 2006.
Commissioner Eric Skrmetta, whose PSC District 1 includes northern parts of Ascension’s east bank, noted the growth the company has had to keep up with.
“I believe that from information that we were provided with, it seemed to be reasonable to move forward and grant the rate increase,” Skrmetta said.
Under the approved increase, the cost for metered water on the typical residential customer’s bill would rise by $3.76 per month from $19.25 to $23.01 before flow-through costs from water suppliers are added, a commission audit memo says.
The flow-through costs, which the commission left unchanged, are based on individual customers’ usage. The typical residential customer would pay another $1.83 per month in flow-through costs, making the total bill amount to $24.84 per month.
Typical commercial users would see monthly metered rates rise by $9.42 from $48.57 to $57.99 before added flow-through monthly costs of $5.66 are factored in, the memo says.
When the unchanged flow-through rate is included, the total expected increase on bills is lowered to the 17 percent range, depending on usage and the kind of customer.
The rate increases affect the fee on the initial 2,500 gallons used per month and the rate for each additional 1,000 gallons of use, according to the memo.
The approved base fee would rise by $2.19, from $11.17 to $13.36 per month.
The approved increase for each additional 1,000 gallons would boost the rate by 46 cents from $2.38 to $2.84 per month.
Ascension Water’s last rate increase took effect in January 2008 and was based on its 2006 fiscal year, a commission report says.
The settlement includes an increase in a variety of nonrecurring fees, such as for sprinkler systems, tapping, reconnections and private fire hydrants.
According to commission auditors, the latest increases would have provided Ascension Water with an 8.396 percent return on its rate base in 2010, the test year for the rate case.
The settlement also rejected Ascension Water’s request to continue automatically passing through increases that primary water suppliers Baton Rouge Water Co. and Parish Water Co. might receive in the future from the PSC.
Ascension Water must apply with the PSC to raise its flow-through rate to recoup those increases.
To calculate the rate increase, the commission staff subtracted from Ascension Water’s cited $18.7 million in capital improvements approximately $1 million that parish government paid the company for new hydrants and infrastructure called for under the parish franchise agreement, Owen said.
“Therefore, the ratepayers will not pay for these items twice,” Cook, the commission spokesman, said in an email.