A privately held water company that serves 107,000 people across Virginia and State Corporation Commission staff have agreed to rate increases averaging 32.88% for water service and 8.3% for sewer service.
The agreement, which is subject to review by an SCC hearing examiner and the three SCC commissioners, is less than Aqua Virginia had asked for last year.
SCC staff accepted the compromise, which trims the water rate increase from the 33.88% and the sewer rate increase of 21.09% that Aqua had sought.
While the impact of the stipulated increases on customers on different systems varies, the largest block of its 35,000 accounts, some 19,878, would see monthly bills increase $13.73, or 31%, to $57.83.
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Most customers in the smaller blocks would see bill increases of 40% to 42%, while 190 would see increases of 21% to 23% and 330 would see monthly bills decline.
The SCC had reviewed hundreds of pages of Aqua Virginia financial reports, maintenance and operations records and capital spending plans, according to a stipulation it and the company jointly filed with the commission.
Aqua operates 191 water systems and nine sewer systems across the state, including small facilities in Caroline, Charles City, Dinwiddie, Fluvanna, Goochland, Hanover, King William, New Kent, Powhatan and Sussex counties.
With their joint filing, the SCC staff and the company are asking a commission hearing officer to review the stipulation and the rates they have agreed are appropriate and then to recommend that the SCC’s three commissioners formally approve the increase.
“This stipulation represents a compromise for the purposes of settlement in this case only,” said the joint filing by the SCC staff and Aqua Virginia.
It noted that the Office of the Attorney General, as well as the boards of supervisors of Accomack, Botetourt, Caroline, Culpeper and Fluvanna counties, all of whom had intervened in the rate request, are not taking a position one way or the other on the settlement proposal.
The settlement stipulation says Aqua should be entitled to earn a return on its net investment in water and sewer systems of 9.7% and notes that the company had actually earned a profit of 3.97% on water facilities and 8.32% on sewer facilities.
Aqua’s president, John Aulbach, has testified that the company needed double-digit rate increases because of a stepped-up program of investments to improve its systems, an investment that totaled some $30 million since its previous rate increase in 2021.
At that time, the SCC approved a 10.8% increase in water rates and a 3.4% increase in sewer rates.
The stipulation also says Aqua will track the impact of complying with new regulations on per- and polyfluorinated substances — the PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is cracking down on with its April 2024 drinking water standards.
In addition, Aqua is to report to the SCC if the state Department of Environmental Quality requires further action after sewage spills at Lake Monticello, in Fluvanna County, and if there are additional spillages in the future.