‘Increasingly difficult.’ Study finds many Kentucky homes struggle with water bills.
Many lower-income Kentucky residents struggle to pay their water bills, pointing up the need for programs to assist them, according to a study by an advocacy organization.
For instance, the analysis found that at 4,000 gallons of use a month, the cost of water from the main system would be a financial burden for people with the lowest 20% of incomes in 72.6% of nearly 1,200 Census tracts across the state.
The study defined water prices as a burden if people had to pay 2% or more of their household income.
“Access to clean, affordable water is a human right, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to pay their water bills,” the study said.
The Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center in Whitesburg, a non-profit law firm and advocacy organization, did the statewide analysis. The authors were Rebecca Shelton, director of policy at the center; Mary Cromer, deputy director; and independent researcher Ricki Draper.
The goal was to assess how affordable water is across Kentucky, or the “water burden.”
The researchers compiled water rates from late 2021 and early 2022 for monthly usage levels at 2,000, 4,000 and 6,000 gallons for most water systems in the state and used income data at the level of U.S. Census tracts.
At the 2,000-gallon level, monthly water bills were not affordable for the lowest-income people in 51.3% of the Census tracts, the study found.
In more than 100 Census tracts, households with income in the lowest 20% were paying more than 5% of their monthly income for water, and in one tract, the cost of water was more than 40% of the money the lowest-income households received each month.
The study showed that the average bill across Kentucky was $22.34 a month for 2,000 gallons; $36.42 a month for 4,000 gallons; and $50.32 for 6,000 gallons.
But the research showed a wide variation in monthly water bills across Kentucky, with some households paying six to nine times as much as others. The study, released in November, considered bills in both the primary water system in an area and the secondary system, given that some places are served by more than one system.
The primary water systems with the highest bills were mostly concentrated in Eastern and Western Kentucky, the study found.
One example cited was Martin County, where the bill was $69.85 for 4,000 gallons of water at the time of the study.
That was the second-highest water bill at that level of more than 200 systems included in the research.
The state Public Service Commission had approved requests for the Martin County system in recent years that created an 84% increase in customers’ minimum water bill in the county to try to stabilize the “dilapidated water system after years of disinvestment and neglect,” the study said.
More than half the water systems covered in the study had had a rate increase in the prior two years.
Water bills have been rising across the country as well, driven up by factors such as increased costs for chemicals and materials and the need to replace aging infrastructure.
The combined water and sewer bill for a typical U.S. household has increased by 54.8% since 2012, or on average 4.1% annually, according to report from Bluefield Research released in December.
Congress created a program in 2021 called the Low Income Household Water Assistance Program (LIHWAP) to help people pay their water bills.
The initial appropriation was a little over $1 billion. States managed the distribution.
In Kentucky, more than 43,000 households tapped into the program, helping thousands of families keep their water on, according to the study.
Kentucky was the first state to use all its allocation, “indicating that Kentucky households across the state are facing water affordability challenges,” the study said.
The Biden Administration’s proposed budget for the current fiscal year cut the program to $111 million, and the House and Senate budget bills didn’t include any money for the program, according to the study.
The study recommended that Congress create a permanent program to help low-income people afford water and that the state also make money available to deal with water burdens.
Other recommendations included considering whether there are ways to charge for water that spread the cost of maintaining a water system equitably among customers.
Some utilities around the country have set up systems for lower-income customers to pay a percentage of their income, rather than the same rate for a certain quantity of water as everyone else, “allowing for bills that are predictable and consistent in cost and more affordable,” the study said.
This story was originally published March 7, 2024 at 10:00 AM.
