Editorial
Flood Of Opposition To Water Rate Hike

The New York City Water Board has us all by the ice cubes.

This past Monday, the Water Board unanimously voted to adopt the biggest increase in 15 years. Beginning in July, water and sewer rates will go up by 11.5 percent. The rate hike will mean that water and sewer rates will increase by 54 percent over the next four years.

When the rate hike first came to our attention we inveighed against it in our Apr. 18, 2007 edition. At that time, we pointed out that the upstate reservoir system established more than a century ago

by far-sighted city officials eliminated the

need for costly filtration plants and elaborate water treatment. We noted that the costs attendant upon owning property in New York City are escalating, confronting the city with the prospect that its middle class, the socio-economic cohort that makes up the greatest part of the taxpayer base, will leave the city in increasing numbers, a situation that will have only undesirable consequences.

What has many elected officials hot under the collar on behalf of their constituents is the fact that, as City Councilmember James Gennaro charges, $75 million of the rate increase has nothing to do with water service delivery, but will go directly into the city's General Fund. City Comptroller William Thompson concurred, noting that most of the increase actually represents excess rent payments. Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. also agreed, calling the rate hike "a tax increase that can and must be stopped".

The councilmembers and Thompson also point out that the Water Board is doing very little to collect outstanding water bills. This, too, it seems to us, is punishing taxpayers for a problem that they did not create and are not responsible for solving. The New York Times examined water records in 2006 and found that of the city's 828,000 water accounts, 21,000 had made no payments at all for at least two years. Thousands more of the city's water accounts were in arrears for shorter periods. Records were so unreliable, however, that the city could not prove that the unpaid bills were accurate and so had not attempted to shut off service to any delinquent residential customers.

It is not possible to live without water. It is not possible for a city to exist without a viable, burgeoning middle class. As we have said on numerous occasions, the police, teachers, bank tellers, cab drivers, small business owners and their employees who make up this group are really the people who keep the city running and through the taxes they pay, provide the financial wherewithal that this metropolis must have to function. No one expects a free ride; we accept that taxes and water and sewer rates are the price we pay for living here. But to saddle an already beleaguered middle class with an 11.5 percent increase in water rates- and the assurance that more such increases are due to come- will serve only to do lasting harm to the city and the people who choose to make it their home.