Your El Paso Water Bill Is Going Up For The Fifth Year In A Row

Your water bill rate has gone up for the past four years in a row so El Paso Water decided to give us all a break and not raise their rates this year.

Just kidding, your rates are going up again.

The El Paso Public Service Board unanimously approved a 5% increase in water and sewer rates for 2020.
Water utility officials say they need the continuing increase in rates to help pay for improvements and expansions in water and sewer systems, and for higher operational costs.

Water utility officials say the 5% increase is reasonable and if they skipped a year, they would just have to do a bigger 9% increase in 2021. I get that it's easier to do small increases rather than a big one every other year, but really, they have a budget for maintenance. Why does it seem like they are never able to operate within their budget?

The utility says the higher rates translate to increasing water resources and replacing pipes and other infrastructure, some of which are 60 to 75 years old.

The average bill will increase by around 4 dollars a month. As you well know, this is budget season so you should definitely expect to see increases in your property taxes from the City, County, EPCC, and UMC. We'll also probably be seeing increases in other utilities as well. We'll keep you posted on any further increases.