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Water Rates Changing Effective January 1, 2016

The Board of DIrectors of Rainbow Munucipal Water District adopted a new water rate structure on December 15, 2015.  These new rates go into effect for all water consumption that occurs on a bill dated after January 1, 2016.  This means that your bill that has consumption that spans from December into January will not be affected by this rate change, but the bill that contains consumption starting after January 1, 2016 will include these new rates.

The rate setting procedure was an involved process that took neary 10 months and involved a variety of RMWD staff, Voluntreer Committees and culminated in a public hearing with the Board of Directors.  The rates are a result of a comprehensive Cost of Service Study that failrly and legally apportions costs among our customer classes.   A copy of this report can be downloaded here:

Cost of Service Study

There are a couple of features of the new rate structure that are notable:

-  Smaller residential customers who use small amounts of water will see their montly bills go down a bit.   Users who use more than 25 units a month or so will see larger bills

-  Larger TSAWR customers will see higher fixed meter fees but lower commodity rates.   The average larger TSAWR customer will see very small changes in their water bills.

-  The overall increase in revenue for the District was 6%.   Since this is the first increase in two years, this represents a 3% per year increase which is in line with normal inflation.   We work hard to keep your rates as low as possible so when you compare this rate change to others in the County you can see the impact of these efforts.

-  Locked off meters will no longer receive a discount on their monthly access fees.   A court case related to Proposition 218 has determined that this is no longer allowable.

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