Tarrant Regional Water District Offers Refunds To 3 Cities
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NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - The Tarrant Regional Water District is returning more than $4 million dollars to water providers who paid up front for water production that wasn't needed due to recent rains and falling demand. It's the first time in years Fort Worth, Arlington, Mansfield and the TRA received money back. But water providers say the money isn't a windfall. It is needed to protect bill payers from rising water costs and to recoup money taken from reserves to pay earlier TRWD fees.
The entities pay up front each year for how much water they estimate they'll need. If they underpay they have to pay more. This year, thanks to rains, they overpaid and now the TRWD is returning the balance; Mansfield about $350,000, Arlington almost $700,000, TRA around $ 1 million and Fort Worth just over $2 million.
All the rain filled local lakes. That meant water didn't have to be pumped in from far away lakes saving more than four million dollars altogether. But, water officials said lower water use meant rates charged for water by TRWD went up and money returned to cities is being used to absorb the higher cost so it doesn't get passed on to consumers.
Joe Smolinski, Director of Water Utilities in Mansfield, said water rates went up .05 cents per 1,000 gallons more than originally planned. He said the returned money will be used as part of the city absorbing the increase in costs for it's rate payers.
And, during the drought, the water departments had to pay millions of dollars MORE than planned to pump in water from east Texas. Fort Worth will use some of it's returned money to recoup those expenditures which came out of the water department's reserves.
"We didn't go in and impact rates with that number which is really less than one percent of our budget," said Fort Worth Water Department spokesperson Mary Gugliuzza. "The last three years they've been coming back and asking for more money. They just happened to give us some back. But again, in March they said we owed them more. So, this will help offset some of that."
Officials at TRWD say the cost of producing water remains fixed and when there is less demand water rates have to be increased to cover those costs.
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