CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A bill signed into law this week by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin deregulates some larger city-owned water and sewer systems in West Virginia along with certain public service districts.
Charleston Sanitary Board General Manager Larry Roller supported Senate Bill 234 as it made its way through the legislative process. It was approved by lawmakers on the final night of the 60-day regular session. Roller said, in Charleston’s case, the deregulation will impact projects not rates customers pay. Roller said currently when the Charleston Sanitary Board wants to do a large project it has to go before the state Public Service Commission, that step has now been eliminated.
“We won’t have to hire lawyers, engineers or accountants to put the case together and go before the commission,” Roller said.
The sanitary board’s projects are currently approved by Charleston City Council along with the system’s rates. Roller doesn’t believe deregulation will cause rampant rate hikes by city-owned water and sewer systems. He said city councils have to answer to residents.
“You have elected officials considering rate proposals and those folks are directly answerable to the rate payers, the electorate,” he said.
The deregulation only applies to municipally-owned systems and PSDs with more than 4,500 customers and $3 million or more a year in revenue, which basically covers the nine largest systems in the state. The problem for many of the utilities is that some of their customers located outside their municipalities, called resale customers, have appealed rate hikes approved by city councils to the state PSC, causing the utilities to spend time and money arguing in favor of their rates.
State Consumer Advocate Jackie Roberts spoke against the deregulation when she discussed the bill with MetroNews last month.
“They’re given a monopoly to sell water and in exchange they’re regulated (by the PSC) so someone is looking at that,” Roberts said. “I am concerned for residential customers whenever an essential service like water is deregulated.”
The law will take effect later this year.