CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – My water bill arrived last week. It’s now up to $189 for me… someone who lives alone and does not water his lawn. My biggest water usage over the last three months is that I prefer to take a bath instead of a shower. Baths use more water. And I’ve washed some of my bedding – things like comforters and heavy blankets – that I’ll be using for the winter. Some of them needed to be run through the washing machine more than once.
Wausau Water Works customers are already absorbing a 54% rate increase. That’s paying for the city’s new water treatment facility, and an insanely expensive filtration system for PFAS, or forever chemicals. The city also decided to speed up the installation of new filtration; doing the work during the winter months will add to the costs.
Now comes word that the rate increase doesn’t cover all of the costs of operating the new plant. Some current water works employees will need to be retrained. New workers will need to be hired. Those costs may be part of a rate increase next year.
Anyone with common sense would think that a new facility would be more efficient and cheaper to operate than an old one. Wrong. The higher personnel costs alone will raise operating costs by about $450,000. Operating and personnel costs should not be an unknown when a new facility is being built.
The Wausau Water Works is tone-deaf on all of this. Who builds a new facility without all of the costs being covered? Who can raise rates 54 percent, and then tell customers that their paying isn’t over? Wausau’s City Council, so far, hasn’t made any commitment that any money recovered from a pending PFAS lawsuit will be used exclusively to offset higher water rates.
Wausau Mayor Katie Rosenberg is the chair of the Wausau Water Works. The house-cleaning should start with her. Wausau already has among the most expensive water rates in the state. What company will move to Wausau to pay those rates? Who will buy homes here when housing costs are so much lower in surrounding communities?
Chris Conley
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