A growing number of customers served by the water utility Aqua Texas in the Houston area say they are being hit with sudden, steep increases in their monthly bills. The complaints, reported by FOX 26 Houston, center on the Magnolia area, where residents say the cost of water has climbed far faster than they can manage in the current economy.
One resident, who lives in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom unit at the Retreat of Magnolia apartment complex and asked not to be identified, laid out the jump in plain numbers. Her water usage bill for May came to 68.33 dollars. For June, it was 162.71 dollars, which she said amounts to an increase of almost 160 per cent for the same small apartment in the space of a single month.
She said she has yet to receive a clear explanation for why the charge rose so sharply. The manager at her apartment complex referred questions to Aqua Texas, the company that provides the water. After she posted about it on a community Facebook page, she said a number of neighbours responded that they were seeing the same thing, with increases of well over 100 per cent.
The spikes come as Aqua Texas pushes for major rate increases that it says are needed to recover nearly 700 million dollars in infrastructure investments. The water company has found itself the target of regulatory, financial and environmental disputes, with its pricing repeatedly drawing scrutiny from customers and officials across the areas it serves.
The frustration is not new. FOX 26 first reported on Aqua Texas increases in July of last year, when the issue hit residents of Candlelight Hills in the Spring area. Customers there said they pay some of the highest rates in the state, describing charges anywhere from double to triple and quadruple the per-gallon price of water compared with other providers.
For the residents caught in the middle, the increases land as one more strain on household budgets. As one customer put it, ordinary ratepayers are left simply asking the company not to raise their water bill, saying that in the current economy it is yet another expense they cannot afford on top of everything else they are already paying.
In a statement, Aqua Texas said it had filed its first request for a statewide water and wastewater base rate increase in 20 years. The company noted that interim rates were granted by the Public Utility Commission in March, and stressed that those interim rates are subject to refund once a final order is issued in the case, in reporting by Randy Wallace of FOX 26.