Drinking Water Operating Permit Fees
In 2011, the Washington State Legislature approved a bill to
raise the operating permit fee for public water systems. We have
adopted rule changes to carry out this legislative requirement.
The fee increase allows us to continue helping water systems
meet their responsibilities to provide safe and reliable drinking
water, now and into the future.
How much will my system pay?
The fee structure includes a $100 base
fee for all systems and per-connection fees based on the size of
the system. We are phasing in the per-connection fees over three
years:
| |
2012 |
2013 |
2014 |
| Base fee for all water systems: |
$100 |
$100 |
$100 |
| Per-connection fee: |
| 14 or fewer services |
$0.65 |
$0.98 |
$1.30 |
| 15 - 99 services |
$0.63 |
$0.94 |
$1.25 |
| 100 - 499 services |
$0.60 |
$0.90 |
$1.20 |
| 500 - 999 services |
$0.58 |
$0.86 |
$1.15 |
| 1,000 - 9,999 services |
$0.55 |
$0.83 |
$1.10 |
| 10,000 - 95,000 services |
$0.53 |
$0.79 |
$1.05 |
| 95,001 or more services |
$50,000 per year |
$75,000 per year |
$100,000 per year |
Late fees will remain unchanged. If assessed a late fee, a water
system will pay an additional 10 percent or $25, whichever is
greater.
We have estimated each water system’s fee, based on the Water
Facilities Inventory information available to us October 1, 2011.
Click to see your estimated fee.
Back to top
Satellite management agencies
The new fee structure provides a break to satellite
management agencies (SMAs) for the systems they own. An SMA is charged a single $100 base fee to cover all the systems it
owns, plus a per-connection fee based on the total number of
connections for all systems. The online fee calculator will
not work properly for SMAs that own multiple systems.
Click here to see a listing of SMA fees. If you need
help calculating your fee, contact John Aden at
(360) 236-3157.
Systems managed but not owned by an SMA pay
the same fees as individual systems, and can look up their estimated
fees with the online fee calculator.
Reducing the impact of the fee increase
We know this is a difficult time to increase fees. That’s why
we’re phasing in these changes.
Phasing in the per-connection fee increase over a three-year
period will allow water systems to budget for the fee increase over
time.
In addition, we eliminated monitoring waiver fees for
water quality testing from the Group A rule (WAC 246-290-990(1)(h)).
The new revenue from operating permit fees will fund the costs of
providing these waivers. Many systems will save hundreds of dollars
each year by not paying this separate fee.
All Group A systems will pay a fee
Under the old fee structure, almost two-thirds of Group A water systems (about
2,700 systems) paid nothing or just $25 per year for their
operating permit. These are the smallest Group A water systems,
which often have the most challenges and create much of the demand
on the state’s time and resources. A recent
report to the
Legislature showed that many small systems are not meeting basic
water quality requirements, jeopardizing the public’s health.
All Group A water systems will now pay a $100 base fee
regardless of size. The additional revenue allows us to put more
emphasis on technical assistance and compliance for small Group A
water systems. This will help systems better assess and improve
their capacity to deliver safe and reliable drinking water.
Back to top
Improving the billing statement
We heard from water systems that the annual billing statement has
not been clear enough. We made improvements so that your billing
statement will be easier to understand.
Counting service connections
Water systems must report their service connections and
population on the Water Facilities Inventory (WFI). We use this
information to calculate operating permit fees and set monitoring
requirements.
Community water systems
During the legislative session, we heard two major concerns from
community water systems about our current method for counting
service connections.
- “Not all systems report residential service connections the
same way.”
We are working with systems to improve service
connection reporting. Some water systems have told us it is
difficult for them to accurately count the number of dwelling
units in multifamily housing and apartment buildings.
Counting multifamily dwelling units
describes methods some systems have used to accurately report
that information on their WFI.
- “Basing the fee on both residential connections and
nonresidential populations leads to inequities.”
Under the
existing fee structure, people may have been counted twice: once
as non-residential consumers and once as residents in their
homes, leading to higher fees for water systems. Or, residential
customers of water systems could have borne the costs of serving
large numbers of consumers who don’t live on the system (such as
shoppers or employees).
To make sure this doesn’t happen, we changed the way we
calculate service connections for community water systems by
counting only residential and nonresidential connections. Each
dwelling unit counts as one residential service connection.
Population served isn't used to calculate operating permit
fees for community water systems.
Noncommunity water systems
The operating permit fee is based on the population reported
on the WFI, using an equivalent number of service connections. These
systems no longer pay an additional fee for residential
connections.
WFI reporting
Water systems are required to update their WFI information each year.
Systems will not have to change the way they report information on
the WFI, because service connections and population are already
reported. We will use this information to calculate your operating
permit fee.
Back to top
For more information
|
