Category Archives: water

Another Editorial From Goldman On Utility Reform

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Paul Goldman has yet another Washington Post editorial that follows up on the long-running water utility reform campaign by neighborhood residents. In this one, he gets down to numbers and compares to food tax.

From editorial:

The food tax bill is now about $80 dollars a year for the average low-income family – and it’s still considered too high by such groups as the NAACP and Democratic liberals. We agree.

But in Richmond, the average poor family is paying $150 to $200 a year for regressive, non-existent taxes embedded within their utility bills.

City leaders, aware of these facts, refuse to take action.

…
Based on Richmond’s new budget, DPU will likely collect between about $30 million of such revenue. Of that, roughly $7 million will be fleeced from the poor.

And again, the real question is how will Council and Mayoral candidates acknowledge and confront this and other financial issues?

Belle Island River Rescue

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WTVR reports on yet another James River rescue from this afternoon:

Virginia State Police and the Richmond Fire Department rescued a woman and two girls from the rocks near Belle Isle in Richmond Saturday afternoon.

The group made it out onto the rocks, but was unable to get back due to high water.

Thankfully no one was hurt.

Reminder- when the river level is high like it is now, everyone must wear a life jacket by law.

Washington Post: Richmond is ripping off its residents

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Thankfully, Norman Leahy and Paul Goldman pick up on Oregon Hill residents’ long-running campaign for utility reform.

Will we see responses from Mayoral candidates?

From their Washington Post column:

The government in Virginia’s capital, Richmond, has a dirty little secret: It uses a little-known city charter provision to rip off poor residents by adding a phony, non-existent “tax” — including a bogus federal “tax” charge — to their water and certain other utility bills.

Over the years, this unconscionable rip-off has totaled many hundreds of millions of dollars. It stems from a Jim Crow-era state law added to Richmond’s charter at the request of city leaders.

Pool Prods On PILOT

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Laurel Street neighbor Charles Pool had a “Correspondent of the Day” letter to the editor in today’s Times Dispatch:

Editor, Times-Dispatch:
Your editorial, “Fix it,” makes some good points regarding Petersburg’s troubled water utility, but what about Richmond’s own deplorable water billing? Unlike Petersburg, Richmond tacks on a payment in lieu of federal income tax onto its water bill. Charging federal income tax on the water bill costs Richmond water customers about $5 million annually and is the most regressive way to raise general funds for the city.
Richmond’s monthly water and sewer service charge, the amount the customer pays before drawing the first gallon of water, is almost $10 higher than Petersburg’s. At $29.03, Richmond’s minimum monthly service charge is one of the highest in the country, and disproportionately penalizes those who conserve water. Many Richmonders are not aware of this high service charge because it is still not shown on the customer’s bill, after years of promising to do so.
Richmond is blessed to own its water utility, but it is wrong to use water, which is a necessity, as a cash cow for padding the city’s general fund. Richmond’s water billing may be more efficient but less fair than Petersburg’s.
Charles Pool.
Richmond.

For more perspective on this, click here. Perhaps Mayoral candidates would like to speak to this issue also.

Hydro-Electric Proposal and Future Of James River

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This morning some people were surprised by this headline in the Times Dispatch: “Application filed for hydroelectric project at Bosher’s Dam”.
If they had attended the author’s talk earlier this week, they might not have been. Tredegar Iron Works and other Richmond industry relied and used hydroelectric power well into the last century.
For myself and perhaps other Oregon Hill residents, this recalls earlier conversations and speculation about riverfront development and ambitions.

Hopefully, regardless of whether the hydroelectric proposal happens or not, it adds on pressure to do something to improve the river’s health and accessibility AS WELL AS forcing Dominion Power to do more with distributed, renewable energy.

Was the City’s utility department authorized to oppose this proposal, submitted in February? And if so, by who?

This also figures into a Kanawha Canal restoration goal that ‘public private partnership’ Venture Richmond unofficially announced earlier this month. I guess the local media is still not ready to report or discuss this yet, but the devil will be in the details- including water levels and water use, recreational opportunities, whether Venture Richmond will respect neighbors’ very reasonable concerns going forward, and costs in relation to other priorities. The City’s Department of Public Utilities manages the Kanawha Canal level as well as the City’s river level. Yes, there’s a Richmond Riverfront Plan, but we all know how these plans are pretty subjective- for example, there’s no Tredegar Green amphitheater in the Plan and there was a previous canal restoration plan that has been thrown aside.

Going back to this hydroelectric proposal, it may be that upriver (and more affluent) neighbors are able to ‘NIMBY‘ it, or maybe the environmental issues with even micro-hydro-electric at this site are too large to overcome, or maybe there is even more interest in the longterm in getting rid of Bosher’s Dam altogether. But the point is, this proposal and others should be part of a more open, public conversation over the future of the James River, local energy/water policy, and our local government.

Richmond, VA vs. Flint, MI Water Rates

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Someone find me a local judge (after trying to draw attention to this issue again, again, and again, I have just about given up on a local journalist or anti-poverty commission)…

After reading this article, entitled “Flint residents paid America’s highest water rates”…

If Flint’s bill included both water and wastewater, Richmond’s bill is MUCH higher.
Flint’s bill for 60,000 gallons of water service= $864 annually
Richmond’s bill for 60,000 gallon of water/sewer service annually is $1,069.
748 gallons per CCF of water. 60,000 gallons = 80 ccf 80ccf divided by 12 equals 6 ccf per month.
Richmond’s base service charge for water is $12.99 per month and for sewer is 16.04 per month for a
total base water/sewer service charge of $29.03 per month or $348 per year.
Richmond’s volume charge for water is $3.60 per ccf and volume charge of sewer is $6.42 per ccf for a total of $10.02 per ccf for water/sewer. 6 ccf X $10.02 + $60.12 per month x 12 equals $721 annually.
$348 annual base water/sewer service charge + $721 for 6 ccf water/sewer service annually = $1,069 annually for 60,000 gallons of water/sewer service. This is 20% higher than Flint’s bill which is mentioned as the highest in the country.

Of course, Richmond residents can at least drink our water….for now…

James River Advocates Upset About Dominion Dumping Plan

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From FaceBook event page:

Dominion is planning on dumping MILLIONS of gallons of highly toxic coal ash wastewater PER DAY into Virginia’s waterways, including our James River.

More from WTVR news coverage on a previous protest:

The State Water Control Board’s final vote on Thursday, Jan. 14, to grant the utility company the state permit required to pump waste from the coal ash ponds at Bremo Bluff Power Station in Fluvanna, up river of Richmond.
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The public forum prior to the permit hearing takes place at the State Water Control Board meeting starting at about 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 14 at the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries at 7870 Villa Park Drive.