Water and Sewer Rate Hikes Are Coming Soon

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Muskingum County Water and Sewer customers will begin seeing an increase in their service bills later in the year.  

Muskingum County Commissioner Melissa Bell explained how the county-provided public-utilities are regulated by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and must keep up with the ever increasing costs of state mandated requirements. 

“We have just approved a rate increase for water,” Bell said. “We have not done a water rate increase since 2016. So it’s been over 10 years since we’ve done that. And it will be 5 percent a year, for each of the next 5 years. And one of the most important things to know about the water department and the sewer department are that each of those departments are what is called enterprise funds. So they are created to be self-sufficient.”

Departments with revenues that are considered Enterprise Funds must, by law, be run like a business and separated from general taxation. They must charge their customers enough to cover their expenses but must remain within set regulations. The water and the sewer departments are separate and do not necessarily serve the same customers, however customers with the county’s water and sewer services will see the same increase on both bills. 

“We haven’t had a rate increase in water since 2016 and we haven’t had one for sewer since 2011 and so this is a necessary adjustment in those rates,” Bell said. “To be able to provide for increased expenditures. And those things would include things such as: maintenance, any kind of expansion that we might want to do, any projects that would be included within those two departments.”

Even though the county provides the public utilities, those departments are totally separate from the projects and departments that are supported through taxation.