| Why Have Your Water Rates Gone Up? |
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Use Less, Pay More? The state of Florida encompasses and is surrounded by a variety ofbodies of water that include oceans, lakes, rivers and streams. With such a unique ecosystem, it is crucial for us to conserve water in our everyday lives. It seems when we help do our part to save water and protect our natural resources, we should save money, right? Wrong. JEA provides more than 360,000 residents of Jacksonville and three other counties with electricity, water, and sewer. They supply more than 80% of all water and sewer needs in the area, so when they began airing advertisements that advocated water conservation and restrictions, it seemed that many citizens heard and responded accordingly. However, many of those same citizens will notice that even though they are using less water, their JEA bill doesn’t cost them any less. This is because JEA’s revenues have dropped and they are faced with a deficit in revenue at almost $2 million to $3 million by September. Therefore, they have proposed another rate increase (beyond the 4.1% rise last October). Does this seem to punish those citizens who are doing their part to conserve our water supply? It seems that way. Surely there is a better system to reward the customers who are conserving water instead of penalizing them with a higher bill. One idea is to utilize block rates (where the price increases with higher blocks of use), which shifts the burden to those using large amounts of water while providing incentives and rewarding those who conserve. This would allow JEA to increase the rate of those users in higher volume blocks and lower the rate of the users in lower volume blocks. Regardless of what system JEA chooses to implement, there should be a way to protect revenues AND conserve water without punishing those who are conserving. |
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