Americans Drowning In Water Bills As Rates Skyrocket Across Country

Americans are drowning in water bills as the cost of one thing they cannot live without continues to climb.

Water rates jumped 62% over the past decade, rising more than twice as fast as grocery prices and outpacing overall inflation, according to a new analysis released Tuesday by Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group.
“It’s almost a quiet emergency,” Mary Grant, water policy director for Food & Water Watch, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “People don’t talk about their water bill. But everyone needs access to water.”

The consumer group looked at the country’s 500 largest community water providers and found Americans are paying significantly more just to keep the taps running.

“Making water less affordable forces households to make hard decisions about what essential expenses to cut back on, such as food or education,” the group wrote.

Californians are getting hit particularly hard, with more than half of the country’s most expensive water providers located in the Golden State, the report shows.

San Jose Water Company topped the list, with rates more than twice the national average, the report found. Getting water to California homes can itself be expensive, with supplies sometimes traveling hundreds of miles before reaching the tap, while some utilities are turning to options like recycled water and desalination, according to the Chronicle.

“We’re working on several fronts to manage increasing costs, with customer affordability top of mind for our team as we make decisions on investments and operating costs for one of the state’s most advanced water utility systems,” San Jose Water told the Chronicle.

The squeeze stretches beyond California, with some of the country’s most expensive providers located in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Illinois and Massachusetts, the analysis found.

Water costs can look dramatically different depending on where Americans live. Some national estimates put average water-only bills at roughly $35 to $40 a month in lower-cost states such as Wyoming, Arkansas, Nebraska and Iowa, while Maryland averages closer to $50 a month.