Agenda - Council - 07/28/2015 - Laserfiche WebLink

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54 planning. Costs include planning and design, capital costs, operation and maintenance costs, and costs to monitor and report compliance with regulatory requirements. Going forward, these costs are expected to increase. The American Water Works Association and others have documented that water and wastewater infrastructure in North America - including Minnesota - is aging and that many communities and wastewater treatment providers must significantly increase their levels of investment in its repair and rehabilitation to protect public health and safety and to maintain environmental standards. Public water suppliers, wastewater utilities, community planners, and elected officials stress the need for financial support for infrastructure changes to achieve sustainable solutions. Some examples of challenges include: • Rebuilding and building new infrastructure • Mitigating the revenue impact of decreased water demand, due to water conservation, on existing systems • Addressing the need for more intense monitoring and treatment in systems with mixed water sources • Lack of reliable and adequate funding sources for implementing many stormwater reuse opportunities The 2015 Drinking Water Revolving Loan Fund Project Priority List illustrates the scope of the need; the list includes requests from eight metropolitan communities for over $67 million dollars to support water supply infrastructure improvements. To provide water supply services, public water suppliers also use a variety of rate structures. A 2015 survey of public water suppliers documents the range of rate structures, provides information about how rates among communities compare, and investigates the impact that rates have on water use (Metropolitan Council, 2015d). When water rates in the metro area are normalized to one another, the monthly household bill ranges from $8.60 to $123.31, with an average of $29.10. For comparison, the monthly average retail rate per household for wastewater service in the Twin Cities metro area was $18.00 in 2011. There is evidence that higher monthly water bills are correlated to lower residential per capita water use (Figure 26). WATER SUPPLY MASTER PLAN- Draft June 2015