Drought Contingency Charge
The Drought Contingency Charge was approved by the City Council on February 1, 2018 and is based on the following:
For Residential or Commercial Accounts with a Yearly Average Below the Median (Currently 12 Units): $2.32 per billing
For Residential or Commercial Accounts with a Yearly Average Above the Median (Currently 12 Units): $6.99 per billing
For Landscape/Irrigation Accounts: $102.14 per billing
In the City of Brisbane, approximately 70% of the cost of providing water to our customers are fixed costs and only about 30% is based on the actual amount of water being provided to the customer. You may wonder, what are fixed costs? They include: maintaining the system, ensuring water quality, completing repairs, and reading meters. These fixed costs are spread out amongst the number of accounts we have.
When a severe drought hits and customers are urged to use less water, our fixed costs continue. Other agencies have increased their rates during periods of drought to cover their costs. The City has instead chosen to create a reserve to use and thus avoid raising rates during a drought. The benefits of this are:
- Customers who decrease their water usage will pay less (as opposed to other agencies who raise rates during a drought to continue to pay for the maintenance of the system), and
- Landscape and Irrigation accounts, which would turn off their sprinklers and thus not pay during a drought, would continue covering an appropriate share of maintaining the system.
By putting this money aside each 2-month billing cycle, the City Council decided it would be the most fair to all of our customers.
