Ferndale awash in complaints about these suddenly high utility bills

Ferndale City Council members faced a storm of criticism Monday night from residents angered by surprisingly high summer water bills.

As part of its plan to pay for a new wastewater treatment plant and other projects, the city raised its sewer rates within the past year and ended a long-standing summer price break on the sewer portion of customers’ water bills.

Bills that arrived in late August were sharply higher for many customers, mostly because the sewer subsidy ended, but also because of increased summer use.

“This watering problem, with that discount taken away, I can’t afford to have a garden anymore,” said Caroline Rose at Monday‘s meeting.

Rose said sewer use isn’t affected by irrigation for lawns and gardens, because the runoff goes into the ground.

“It’s not moral or right to charge for the use of a sewer when the extra water is not going into the sewer,” Rose said.

City spokesman Riley Sweeney said that most customers faced an increase of about $20 on their August bills, which covered a two-month cycle.

But residents who used more water — for example, a big family with a swimming pool — saw their monthly bills rise by $350 or more.

Ferndale provides water, sanitary sewer and storm sewer utility services for residential and business customers. Residents are charged a base rate for water, with additional charges for actual use per unit of water, which is 100 cubic feet or 748 gallons.

Sewer charges also start with a base rate, with additional fees based on actual water use.

Most customers — 58.9 percent — use 10 or fewer units of water each billing cycle, according to the city’s website.

In the U.S., an average person uses 80 to 100 gallons of water per day, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The city is preparing to build a new water treatment plant and a pumphouse for a new well, Sweeney said.

“All those things are expensive and we hadn’t raised our rates in a while because of the recession,” Sweeney said.

Sweeney said some customers experienced a kind of sticker shock for water use over what proved to be a warmer than normal summer, with below-normal rain for the months of May through August.

Customers also may have leaky toilets or dripping faucets and hadn’t realized how small leaks can be costly, he said.

“When people get an unexpectedly high bill, the most common cause is a leaky toilet,” Sweeney said.

In response, the city is offering free dye packs that residents can use to check for leaks.

Some 1,000 such leak-test kits should be available at City Hall by the end of the week, he said.

Sweeney said the city is planning a special meeting in the spring of 2019 to discuss its water billing procedure.

This story was originally published September 18, 2018 at 3:49 PM.