Water rates unchanged in new Westmoreland municipal authority budget

Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County water rates will remain unchanged for the third straight year under a 2021-2022 operating budget approved Wednesday.

Authority board members unanimously voted to adopt the nearly $104 million budget that allocates about $7.3 million for routine capital improvement projects and maintenance of the water and sewer systems.

“It’s very important to remember that, by our growth, we’ve been able to keep rates steady,” said board Chairman Randy Roadman.

Officials said the average customer will continue to pay about $46 a month for water, a figure that authority leaders said is $15 below the national averages last compiled in 2017 by the U.S. Census Bureaus’s American Housing Survey.

The three years of rate freezes followed three years of water bill increases totaling 39%.

The authority has nearly 122,000 water customers in Westmoreland, Allegheny, Armstrong, Fayette and Indiana counties and also provides sewer service to more than 28,000 customers.

The new operating budget, which starts April 1, includes projected revenues of $4.7 million in royalties from natural gas wells drilled on authority properties and leases with private communication companies to rent space on water tanks and other utility grounds for cell phone towers and advertising. Those revenues are projected to be $1 million more than what was earned during the 2020-2021 fiscal year.

Authority officials said no additional borrowing is planned for the upcoming budget year. The authority borrowed about $341 million since 2013 to pay for large-scale capital improvement projects. It has about about $75 million in the bank left to spend from $184.4 million in bonds issued in 2016.

It was that last borrowing that prompted authority board members to authorize the three years of rate hikes through 2018.

“Three years later, you are reaping the fruits of that good decision (to borrow capital improvement funds),” said authority business manager Brian Hohman. “The authority and its customers are in a good position.”