At last count, CUC has 14,507 power customers, he said.
CUC on Wednesday filed its petition for rate increase for water and wastewater with the Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission.
In its petition, CUC said residential water customers using 5,000 gallons per month will see an increase in their monthly bill by $4.88.
Customers using 10,000 gallons per month, or more the average residential consumption, will see an increase of $6.73 per month, Fletcher said.
For residential wastewater customers generating 5,000 gallons per month, the new rate will increase the monthly bill by $17.21.
Customers generating 10,000 gallons per month will see an increase of $34.11 per month while customers generating 15,000 gallons per month will see an increase of $51.57 per month.
Decrease of customers
According to the testimony of Dan V. Jackson and Robert E. Young of Economists.com, CUC’s rate consultant, due to a combination of higher rates and continuing economic difficulties, CUC continues to lose a significant number of customers.
This results in lower volumes of water and wastewater services, the consultant said.
CUC wants to establish several new customer classes to gain a better understanding of the usage patterns of customers, and to ensure that eventually each unique customer class pays its own cost of service.
Significantly higher
Fletcher said CUC will be providing the water and wastewater rate information separately since there are more water customers than wastewater customers.
“The proposed rate increases for wastewater customers are significantly higher,” he admitted.
He said this is due to several factors, “foremost among them is that there are far fewer wastewater customers now than just a few years ago.”
At the end of fiscal year 2005, CUC had 6,059 wastewater customers.
As of July 2011, that number was 2,787, which means that the fixed and operating costs of the wastewater system have to be covered by far fewer customers.
“These costs continue to increase, as CUC makes necessary, and in many cases federally mandated, system improvements,” Fletcher said.
CUC is doing everything to minimize costs, he added.
Since 2009, Fletcher said CUC has received total grant authority for over $23 million for water and wastewater planning and capital improvements projects.
“Without these grants paying for critical infrastructure improvements to our delivery and conveyance systems, the necessary rate increases would have been much higher,” he added.
He reiterated that CUC is a publicly run, non-profit utility and it “does not seek to make a profit; it seeks only to recover the cost of providing utility service to its customers.”
To the extent that CUC cannot implement rates sufficient to cover its costs, it will continue to lose money, which risks insolvency, Fletcher said.
“As difficult and painful as these rate requests may be, they are critical to allowing CUC to remain functional and providing vital community services,” he told Variety in an email.
Forecasting
The water accounts have fallen from a peak of 13,604 in fiscal year 2005 to an average of approximately 10,421 in fiscal year 2011.
In fiscal year 2011 CUC continued to shed water accounts, Economists.com said, adding that total water accounts as of June 2011 fell to 9,894.
Water usage has also continued to decline.
Water consumption peaked at 2,262,662,385 gallons in fiscal year 2005, and has fallen steadily to 1,527,076,441 gallons in the past 12 months.
Wastewater accounts have declined at an even greater degree than water accounts from 6,059 in 2005 to an average of 3,095 in 2011.
In 2011, the rate at which wastewater accounts has declined accelerated.
In September 2010 there were 3,522 accounts, but by July 2011 the total fell to 2,787 accounts.
