Evanston officials are considering raising the water bills of households that use the most water to help pay for the replacement of out-of-date pipelines, authorities said. If implemented, the policy may mean large institutions like Northwestern will pay more for water.
Almost one-third of the 157 miles of pipeline supplying water to the city have exceeded their 100-year recommended lifetime. Another 39 miles are more than eight decades old. Over the past few years, the city has replaced about a mile and a half of water main annually, but now significant capital costs have halted production, authorities said.
The total project, to be completed over time as the funds materialize, will cost $60 million. The Evanston City Council will discuss how to finance the replacement effort at a special City Council meeting Monday.
As a solution, officials are reconsidering Evanston’s water rates and how they are calculated, Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl said.
“The advice I’ve gotten is to charge less if you use less and to charge more for the people who use more because they’re usually the people with bigger homes who can afford more,” she said.
Heavy users of water would pay more per gallon than light water users, Tisdahl said. The policy would effectively increase the water bills of large institutions, such as NU and Evanston Hospital.
She has already discussed payment options with University President Morton O. Schapiro.
“I’m hoping to have a cooperative relationship where we can get tax advice because really what I want to do is do the fairest job I can,” Tisdahl said. “But I definitely do not want to have people who can’t afford to pay more for water have their water turned off.”
To fund pipeline replacement, the city, which already sells water to Skokie and a consortium of four communities in west Cook County, may also try to sell water to more communities.
“If we can increase our wholesale customers then we could mitigate the cost to our own residents of Evanston,” said Dave Stoneback, superintendent of water and sewer.
Any community licensed to receive water from Lake Michigan without a treatment plant of its own is a potential client, Stoneback said.
The city is also seeking money from state loans and federal grants to pay for the repairs, City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz said.
“We’ve been very aggressive in looking to get funds,” he said. “We’re going to continue to be creative there.”
Evanston needs considerable funds for this project partly due to a 15-year-old council decision to transfer part of the city’s water revenue to the general fund instead of letting it flow back into the water department, Bobkiewicz said.
He likened it to a family spending funds designated for home repairs on other expenditures.
“In city terms, rather than leaving that money for upgrades on the house, we took it to go on vacation a few times,” Bobkiewicz said.
City officials wish to ensure water remains affordable, no matter the solution to this capital-flow issue.
“Water is absolutely essential for life,” Tisdahl said. “I don’t want to charge so much that some of our residents can’t afford it.”
