Water Conservation Reduces Rate Increases

Utilities frequently face this question, “Why do you ask me to conserve water, then raise my rates?” The relationship between conservation and water rates is not always well understood and people are perplexed by rate increases when system-wide water use has decreased, blaming water conservation and efficiency for higher rates. Considering the economic costs that were avoided by conservation efforts, the analysis of the data from several Minnesota cities showed that customer bills are significantly lower today than they would have been without conservation. To determine the effect of conservation on water demands, annual population, and water system demands were analyzed from 1999 to 2019 for the cities in the study. The 1999 per capita demands and population was used to project demands without conservation and compared the actual demands to show the savings.