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Deer
Creek Water Rates – An Update
What this means is that CWU will not be able to raise water rates in DCF until the hearing is over and will have to testify at the hearing as to why its rates are so high. Anyone in DCF has the opportunity in the next 30 days to Petition to Intervene in this hearing. You can do that by calling the PUC at (303) 894-2000 and requesting a form to fill out and return. If you are approved as an Intervenor, you can attend all meetings with CWU to discuss their water rates and can ask them questions about how they came up with them. I would encourage any and all of you DCF residents to petition to become an Intervenor. CWU needs to be held accountable by its customers to justify its excessive rates. I am hoping we can get CWU to roll back its rates to something more reasonable. The hearing is scheduled
for 6 March 2005 before an Administrative Law Judge for the Commission.
The hearing will take place at 9:00 AM at the PUC office, 1580
Logan Street, OL-2, Denver, CO 80203. Please make plans to come
and support those of us who will be there to ask the tough questions. Concerned About Your Water Costs? Recently a company called Colorado Water Utility, Inc. (CWU) took over management and operation of our community water system. Immediately they sent a letter to us announcing that our water rates would nearly double. Since then CWU has changed out the water meters to each one of our houses, and many residents have experienced anywhere from a 3 to 10 times increase in their July water usage compared to June. What is going on? The Table below gives you some idea how bad things are. The Table compares the average cost per 1000 gallons of water for a typical annual usage profile of 115,000 gallons for several surrounding communities.
When we moved into Deer Creek Farm we were told that our water rates would be kept equal to or lower than our surrounding communities. As you can see, our new rates are higher than all of our neighbors. This is not what we expected. Have any of you heard from CWU why our rates had to be doubled? There may be a reason for it, but I haven’t heard what it is. In fact, I haven’t heard much of anything from CWU face-to-face at all. After CWU announced the increased rates, many of us began conserving our use of water. You can drive around the neighborhood and see the dried up lawns and shrubbery. This is a logical response to those of us on fixed incomes or trying to make ends meet. This conservation must have had an effect on the water usage in the community because in our July bill CWU included a newsletter that had an article in it that threatened to increase our rates even more if we did not use more water. I don’t consider that good public relations from our new water system management company. My concern is we don’t have many options. Our community is zoned such that we can’t have private wells. It is not clear whether there is any State or County agency that has jurisdiction over private community water systems like ours, so our ability to have our grievances heard is restricted. I am also concerned that aggressive water rate pricing by CWU will reduce the attractiveness of our homes in the resale market. Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions to this situation. We need CWU to come forward and face the community and explain its actions and plans for the future. Let’s all work toward that end. Bruce McQuaid Also from Bruce, a few days later: Randy Garroutte at the PUC said that we could lodge a complaint
with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission about our water rates
and meter readings. He said Colorado Water Utility (CWU) was going
to file a set of documents about their water company with the PUC
by September 1, 2005. He said the documents are to include their
water rates. I think we should have a set of complaints on file
with the PUC when those documents are filed. The PUC may have hearings
on these documents, and we want to be informed of when those hearings
are and to be included in them.
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