District of Kitimat Council has passed a motion to consider a 13.9 per cent increase in water rates.
The motion was made at the Mar. 7 council meeting and under this proposed increase users could see water rates jump from $144 to $164, or about $2 a month. The money from this potential increase would then go towards improvements to the water system, most notably improvements to water quality in Service Centre.
Water rates in Kitimat have not been adjusted in a long time and after staff reported back with impacts to some users it was time to consider a potential increase.
“We haven’t changed water rates for a very long time and with the $20 increase to the residential that equates to 13.9, I believe that it’s fair to have a similar increase to the existing in-place water rates structure that we have,” said Coun. Mario Feldhoff.
Feldhoff who originally made the motion to consider this bylaw also said that in the future, council could examine this bylaw again or see how the changes are affecting users.
Coun. Terry Marleau also echoed this sentiment.
“I do think that going forward we do have to monitor this, the high user water examples we see here do have a little bit of an increase,” said Marleau.
He also mentioned that Kitimat does have a good water source currently, however, the potential impacts of climate change needs to be considered moving forward.
The motion to consider this water rates increase was passed unanimously and in the future council will have a chance to consider specific language in the bylaw.
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