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Thread: Water Authority again raises rates

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    Water Authority again raises rates

    The Erie County Water Authority has raised its rates for a seventh straight year, from $2.81 to $2.86 for every thousand gallons come Jan. 1.

    Though the Water Authority sits on a huge financial reserve, amounting to about 40 percent of its annual operating needs, it raises its water rates each year. The authority has increased its rates 29 percent since 1998.

    Currently, however, the authority is drawing from the reserve fund to help finance part of a five-year, $113 million improvement program. Included is the installation of permanent standby generators at its Sturgeon Point and Van De Water treatment plants.

    The authority’s failure to post generators at those facilities and at other key sites in its network led the water system to go dry during the freak snowstorm that hit Western New York in October 2006.

    Erie County Health Department officials pushed the authority to at least place temporary generators at Van De Water and Sturgeon Point until the permanent generators could be obtained. Temporary generators are now at the treatment plants.

    Authority officials said they also will replace or improve water lines in several areas of its territory serving much of Buffalo’s suburbs. The authority also intends to upgrade security at its major sites.

    At Sturgeon Point in 2006, authority officials learned an intruder had been entering the property to grow marijuana.

    On Oct. 30 of this year, a thief scaled a fence at the authority’s service center on Union Road in Cheektowaga to take a Water Authority car, while under the watch of cameras. He drove it through a gate, but the authority was unaware of the theft until a sheriff’s deputy inquired hours later about the abandoned vehicle.

    In approving a 2008 budget of $62.5 million for 2008, authority officials said their rate increase will add just $4 a year for the average customer.

    Water Authority Commissioners Frank Swiatek and Fran Warthling voted to approve the budget and its rate increase when put before them Nov. 30. New member Kelly Vacco, who had just been appointed by the County Legislature, abstained.

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    Over the last 7 years that's a 37% Increase

  3. #3
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    I know the county either requires or desires reserves of 40% of its budget as a cushion. Is this a standard among most entities?

    Even so, it's another example of bloated government bureaucracy, I'm sure. I'd like to see an audit of the ECWA.
    It doesn't effect me, being a resident of the city, but, we also have our own problems here. A company took over the city water...and they enjoy increases just about every year as well. With Lake Erie right next store, no one in this region should have water bills as high as they are.

    I keep saying this, our government and its agencies will keep screwing us until we stand up to them.

    It is okay to say "NO." (Boston Tea Party)

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