16 March 2023
TOPEKA (KSNT) – For a single family home in Topeka, it costs six dollars and six cents per one thousand gallons. For commercial, that price is four dollars and 48 cents. But for business owners and residents, that price could be higher starting next year.
That’s because there’s a possibility water rates in Topeka could go up. For people like Chuck Cooper and his wife, it’s upsetting news.
“The increase through this year is approximately 175 percent higher now than it was back in 2000 when I first got into the business,” Topeka resident, Chuck Cooper said.
Cooper owns 37th Street Carwash in Topeka. A business that, obviously, uses water.
With a proposed rate increase, it will cost even more for him to operate his business.
“Water is our biggest utility right now,” Cooper said. “More than gas, more than electricity by far. Sometimes we pay 2,000 to 2,500 dollars a month for water alone.”
Nobody likes a price hike. Including Topeka City Manager Stephen Wade.
“Nobody likes to raise rates,” Wade said. “If we could do this without raising them, we would have done this a long time ago.”
Wade says the rate increase needs to happen. With the cost of chemicals upwards of 50 percent, the cost of lime to soften the water is up 100 percent, in this economy that means the price of water has to go up as well.
“We take the delivery of clean safe drinking water very seriously,” Wade said. “It’s something that Topeka prides itself on, every citizen expects.”
The purpose of the increase would be to fix the dilapidated water mains in the city. Wade says the city is millions of dollars away from being able to replace the current pipes with a new life cycle.
“We’re just trying to get to 150 years,” Wade said. “It would cost us at least 80 million dollars to of new pipe in the ground to get to 150. It’s much more than that to get to 100.”
The city council won’t take action until around April. Although the open meetings have helped to educate why they’re doing it, as well as listening to people like Cooper, who doesn’t want to operate his business at a higher price.
“To me that’s extreme,” Cooper said.