Residents of some towns in the Miami Valley are paying hundreds of dollars more on their water bills than their neighbors.
A Dayton Daily News investigationshows there's a wide range of water bill rates across southwestern Ohio, and even among cities that are close to one another. People in Xenia had an average water bill of $115, while their neighbors in Yellow Springs paid just over $400 on average.
WYSO’s Mike Frazier spoke with Josh Sweigart, editor of investigations for the Dayton Daily News, about what their team found.
This transcript was lightly edited for clarity.
Josh Sweigart: What we found is a pretty wide gulf. There's a pretty surprising difference from one jurisdiction to the next, a huge range in the cost of water — ranging from $69 in the little village of Minster to $401 in the similarly-sized village of Yellow Springs. And that really made us wonder why are these differences so profound. And they were all literally all over the map. It wasn't just a matter of geography. In Clark County, the average water bill in New Carlisle was $235, where nearby Enon it's only $84. The differences were massive and of course with cost of living increases being what they are, we thought it was an important story to pursue.
Mike Frazier: Now you mentioned Clark County, two villages really close together with such different water rates, what was the reason for that?
Sweigart: There's a lot of factors that go into this. We talked to numerous local utility experts and regional and national utility experts who said that it comes down to how you borrow money and what the needs are for capital improvement.
Geography. Not just geography in terms of where you're at but what's under the ground. Surface water is considerably more expensive to treat than groundwater, so that’s some factors in these communities. The ones that are nearby are presumably relying upon the same groundwater but their differences could include how much money they borrowed for their infrastructure, how old their infrastructure is, how recently was updated.
Some communities collect water revenue and use that to subsidize other parts of their budget, so they'll collect extra money in their water bills to supplement the general fund with the intent of keeping other revenue sources like income taxes and things like that lower.
There's a lot of different factors to go into it.
Frazier: Now, what about Yellow Springs? Their water rates are at the top of the list. What's going on there?
Sweigart: Yellow Springs has some of the highest water rates and it's not just high, it's the highest in this entire study and by a wide margin. Interestingly, Yellow Spring officials would not comment for the story. We talked to them and they received our calls and emails, and did not want to talk. I can say that we've actually followed up with a public record request, under public records law, to get budget information and get more information from them to get more detail about it. But here's what we do know: We know that the village just a couple years ago completed a new water treatment plant for $7.2 million. They've had real problems in Yellow Springs over the years with water quality. I don't know if you recall but a few years ago there were a lot of complaints about brown water coming out of people's taps and they had to reassure people that it was just a color thing — the water was safe to drink. So they put a lot of money into trying to address just the color of the water because that was freaking a lot of people out. You want clear water when you turn your tap on, right? And so in 2023, they voted to increase to a new rate schedule to increase their water rates over subsequent years. Because of that and things they had done to increase the cost of their system was not being covered by their rates and so now the rates are increasing because of that recent vote.
Frazier: Oakwood residents are seeing an increase in their rate at a pretty quick clip. What was the reason behind that?
Sweigart: Oakwood saw a nearly 50% spike in water rates last year. And there's more coming. My understanding is that it had to do with infrastructure and that the need to improve and upgrade infrastructure.
Frazier: Is there anything that residents can do to challenge these increasing water rates?
Sweigart: Well these are all elected officials and elected bodies, so they're just basic questioning and holding the government accountable. These are old systems. We have an aging infrastructure. And so there's discussions to be had about how much money and how to best go about investing in infrastructure going forward. This isn't unique to water. We see this with roadways and bridges and everything else. As a community and society, we all need to have conversations about how best to maintain these things and how to pay for them. We do have a fractured system. We have little villages with water systems. Obviously these facilities are seeing the same challenges beyond just the normal aging infrastructure. Inflation’s going up. Everyone is seeing the cost of construction skyrocketing. They're dealing with the same thing. They have to replace the water because we can't have water mains break. And they're dealing with environmental regulations and other concerns. The issue of PFAS has been an issue with local water systems in the last couple years and making sure that's being treated is an expensive proposition.
And then ultimately, saving water. Probably a good idea too. There's all the things we all do to cut down on our water bills: making sure our toilets aren’t leaking; using lower flow showers if you can bring yourself to do so. So there's a lot of tips for water conservation that you can find that that might help control part you can control and the part can't control.
I think it’s matter of just public dialog and democratic process.
