Water conservation rate structure

Changes made to water and sanitary sewer billing rates

To comply with a 2008 Minnesota state statute change requiring that all metropolitan public water suppliers adopt a water conservation rate structure, the City of Bloomington is changing its residential water and sewer services billing.

Although the recent changes to the state law only impact municipal water rate structures, the City operates its water and wastewater systems using the same staff, equipment and warehouse facilities for both systems. As such, the City is addressing the impacts of this required change on both water and sanitary sewer rate structures.

On August 1, 2010, a partial rate change will include a two-tier water rate structure, elimination of the basic charge and a sanitary sewer rate increase for the City’s commercial accounts that are currently billed based on water flow.

With the exception of homeowners using significantly more water than average, these changes will decrease the annual amount paid by single-family homes.

On January 1, 2011, these additional sanitary sewer structural changes will take place:

All multifamily dwellings (townhomes, apartments, mobile homes, etc.) currently being billed on a flat-rate unit basis will be converted to flow-based monthly billing.
All single-family homes will move to flow-based bimonthly billing. Each bill will be based on a single-family home’s average winter water usage. This method recognizes that extra water used during summer months for irrigation does not enter the sanitary sewer. Overall, the amount paid by single-family homes for sanitary sewer will decrease slightly.

These structural changes, designed to fairly allocate costs for water and sanitary sewer usage, are independent of future rate increases that may be approved by the City Council.

Specific changes adopted on June 21, 2010

A Notice of Summary was prepared to describe the ordinance changes in greater detail. Use the following links to view the Notice of Summary and a copy of the City Code, Section 11, showing the changes made as a result of this ordinance's adoption.

Notice of Summary (31KB PDF)
City Code, showing changes made by this ordinance (87KB, 7-page PDF)

For additional information, contact:

Terry Neuman, Customer Service Supervisor
1700 W. 98th Street
PH: 952-563-4908
E-mail: tneuman@ci.bloomington.mn.us