How Much Do You Pay for Water?

Most of us probably don’t think about it, because it does not seem like much, until we have to buy bottled water from a delivery service.  It’s just a penny a gallon, isn’t it?

The truth is that water rates vary widely, even among residents served by a municipally owned system.  

Not only do rates vary by community, but how your water is measured (hand readings, radio telemetry readings, or unmetered), the units used (by cubic feet or gallons), when you are charged (monthly, quarterly, semiannually), and the rate basis (by amount consumed and by size of service pipe), and whether the rate structure is one-size-fits-all or has tiers that escalate as use rises, or drop for a volume discount.  

Water in Westchester is a utility crazy quilt.

For, example, the average homeowner in the Village of Irvington pays about two and one half times what her counterpart in Croton-on-Hudson pays.

Croton’s water rate for a typical homeowner is $0.60 per 100 gallons and appears to be among the lowest water rates in Westchester.

Irvington is one of 22 Westchester municipalities whose has a municipal system that buys its water from New York City’s supply.  Another 12 Westchester municipalities rely on private water companies who, in turn, also buy its water supply from New York City.

Croton is very unusual in having its own well field as a ground water supply source, insulating it from the pricing of New York City’s supply and the treatment or filtration that surface water may require. Is that why rates are lower there?

The Village of Ossining system supplies filtered water to about 5,800 customers both inside and outside village boundaries. Ossining’s rate for village resident equates to $0.82 per 100 gallons.

“Approximately 85% of the County’s population is served by the New York City Water System,” notes the County Data Book.

In recent years, Westchester has drawn about 40 billion gallons drawn from New York City reservoirs. That draw equates to 50,000 gallons per person served per year.

There is a finite amount of water on Earth. Here in the Hudson Valley, we take water for granted. Recent extreme weather events have brought us way more water than is “normal.”

But more violent storms and deluges spell bad news for our water supply. The runoff literally muddies our reservoirs, making expensive filtration necessary.

The new filtration plant New York City is building in Van Cortlandt Park will cost three billion dollars and is scheduled to open in 2012.  

Even those communities using wells not directly affected by runoff see that storm erosion weakens soil around the water, storm water and sewer system pipes, triggering repair work that seems ever more frequent.

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