Water & Wastewater Rate Survey Definitions

Residential Water Unit: One residential water unit equals an individual house or apartment, i.e., a 12-unit apartment building equals 12 residential water units.

Non-residential Water Unit: Non-residential units are commercial industrial, educational, or institutional facilities. Includes churches, schools, government facilities, etc. One industrial connection equals one non-residential water unit.

Equivalent Residential User: One equivalent residential water connection equals total water consumption per day divided by 250 gallons per day.

Uniform Rate: The charge for each unit of water consumed remains constant regardless of consumption.

Flat Rate/Blanket Rate: Every customer pays the same amount for water or wastewater each billing cycle regardless of volume used.

Ascending Block Rate: Increasing volumetric rates are charged for increased consumption. Ascending rates are also known as increasing, inclining, or inverted block rates.

Declining or Decreasing Block Rate: The unit price of each succeeding block of usage is charged at a lower unit rate than the previous block(s).

Connection Fee: Charge made by the utility to recover cost of connecting the customer’s service line to the utility’s facilities per AWWA M26. The connection fee is a one-time charge.

Capital Recovery Charge: This charge has the purpose of providing funds to be used to finance all or part of capital improvements necessary to serve new customers and are raised outside of capital received from general water/sewer use rates. These fees are capital recovery fees that are established as one-time charges assessed against developers or new water or wastewater customers to recover part or all of the cost of additional system capacity constructed for their use. AWWA’s M26 defines them as a contribution of capital towards recently completed or planned future plant or distribution facilities necessary to meet the service needs of new customers to which such fees apply.

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