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Increasing Rates, Decreasing Affordability - Addressing Equity in a Time of Rising Costs

机译：提高率，降低了成本上升时的负担性 - 解决权益

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The majority of communities in the northeastern Illinois region have experienced water bill growth rates exceeding income growth rates over the past 10 years. As water bills have escalated at a faster pace than overall cost-of-living, the ability of consumers to pay for water service has declined. Ability-to-pay refers to the capacity of customers to pay water rates that reflect the full costs of providing water service. During the replacement era for water infrastructure, how do we ensure affordability while ensuring safe and sustainable systems to deliver water service? Water service costs and infrastructure funding consistently rank at the top of the list in surveys of challenges facing the water industry. Cost drivers in the water industry include resource depletion, pollution, infrastructure investment needs, population growth/decline, rising input costs (energy, chemicals, labor), increasing regulatory burdens, and traditional sources of subsidies and loans decreasing, or becoming less stable. Illinois Indiana Sea Grant (IISG), in partnership with The Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) and Elevate Energy collaborated on a research initiative to explore the extent to which communities in the greater Chicago region are facing water affordability challenges and identify opportunities to address these concerns. The scope of work has three primary objectives: (1) assess what today's best methodologies for determining water affordability are; (2) analyze and identify where water affordability is a concern; and (3) jump start regional dialog on best practices in addressing affordability for those that need it most. This presentation will highlight these research findings and provide information on what industry best practices are being deployed to address this growing issue in water service. The water affordability assessment method for the northeastern Illinois region was informed by a review of the literature, as project team and technical advisory committee member input, and a consideration of available data/data limitations'. The purpose of the water affordability assessment is to provide a snapshot in time of residential water affordability, to better frame and understand the scale and scope of the water affordability issues, and make locally appropriate policy and program recommendations. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) ability-to-pay affordability threshold is used to provide a reference water affordability assessment. This measurement takes water bills as a percentage of median household income for the users of the water system. The U.S EPA water affordability guidelines were, however, designed to assess community water affordability, not residential household water affordability. Several adjustments to the U.S. EPA metric are needed to better address residential household water affordability. Lacking a consensus among water affordability experts as to a single best metric, several adjustments/additional metrics are examined. For this analysis, our primary data sources included the results of a 2016 water rate survey conducted by the IISG, and the American Community Survey's (ACS) 2016, 5-year estimates for income and number of households. The geography included the 7-county greater Chicago metropolitan region, and data was available for 169 communities in the region. We calculated the percentage of households that arc water burdened by aggregating water burdened households by census tract to the municipal level. Next, we looked at combined water and wastewater costs as a percentage of mean annual household income for the lowest quintile. An additional metric for water affordability is the number of hours required to work at a given wage to pay the water bill. The average combined water and sewer bill for the municipality was divided by lowest quintile minimum hourly wage, for each census tract. For each census tract, weights were applied when aggregating to city and regional averages, respectively. The combined household water and wastewater bill divided by the prevailing minimum wage to determine the number of hours required to work to pay the water/wastewater bill. The research data was compiled into an online data visualization tool for community outreach. For each community, this includes a visualization of water rate escalation over the last 10 years, compared to how household incomes in the region have changed over the last 10 years. In our literature review and group discussions, the issue arose of how to consider disposable income and essential costs in comparison to water costs. We ultimately decided not to incorporate it into our water affordability index, but to instead provide municipal-level estimates of average housing and transportation costs alongside calculated water burden and average water bills in the online tool. Because every community is unique, there is no one-size-fits all water affordability solution. Some of the many factors that vary locally impacting affordability policies and programs include: socio-demographic characteristics, community financial and management capacity, age of the water system, source water quality and quantity, size of the customer base, vulnerability to climate change, housing and land-use characteristics, and customer water use patterns. Water affordability solutions can be broadly categorized into five strategies, including: reduce costs, promote water efficiency, rate design and policy, strengthen customer assistance programs, and target hard to reach populations. Each of these strategies is briefly discussed, including a definition, pros/cons, implementation considerations, cases from across the nation, and recommendations.
机译：大多数在伊利诺伊州东北部地区社区都经历过水费增长率超过过去10年的收入增长率。由于水费也比整体成本的生活费更快的速度升级，消费者支付供水服务的能力有所下降。能力到支付是指客户要交水费，反映供水服务的全部成本的能力。在更换时代的水利基础设施，我们如何确保经济承受能力，同时确保安全和可持续的系统，以提供用水服务？自来水成本和基础设施建设资金在面临的水行业面临的挑战调查列表的顶部始终排名。在水行业的成本驱动因素包括：资源枯竭，污染，基础设施投资需求，人口增长/下降，投入成本（能源，化工，劳动力）上涨，越来越多的法规负担，补贴和贷款减少，或变得不那么稳定的传统来源。伊利诺伊州印第安纳州海洋基金会（IISG）与大都会规划委员会（MPC）和提高能源伙伴合作进行的研究倡议探索其在大芝加哥地区的社区所面临的水可负担性挑战的程度和识别机会来解决这些问题。工作范围有三个主要目标：（1）评估什么当今最好的确定水的承受能力的方法是; （2）分析和识别其中水可负担性是一个问题; （3）跳在解决承受能力，为那些最需要它的最佳做法，启动区域对话。本演示将突出这些研究结果和提供什么样的行业最佳实践被部署在水中服务来解决这个问题，越来越多的信息。在伊利诺伊州东北部地区的水承受能力评估方法，通过文献回顾，如告知项目组和技术咨询委员会成员的输入，并考虑现有数据/数据局限性。水承受能力评估的目的是在居民用水承受能力的时候提供一个快照，以便更好地框架和理解的水承受能力问题的规模和范围，并作出适合当地的政策和方案建议。美国环境保护署（EPA美国）的能力到支付承受能力阈值被用来提供参考水承受能力的评估。这种测量需要水费作为水系统的用户家庭收入中位数的百分比。在中美EPA水可负担性指导方针，然而，旨在评估社区供水承受能力，而不是住宅的家庭用水承受能力。在美国EPA指标多次调整都需要更好地解决居民生活用水承受能力。缺乏作为一个最好的指标，多次调整/其他指标中的水可负担的专家共识进行检查。为了便于分析，我们的主要数据来源包括2016年的IISG，和美国社区调查的（ACS）进行的2016年水率调查结果显示，5年估计收入和家庭的数量。地理包括7县大芝加哥大都市区，以及数据是可用于该地区169个社区。我们计算弧水背负通过聚合水负担家庭通过人口普查来市级家庭的百分比。接下来，我们看综合供水和污水处理成本为最低的五分之一人口的平均家庭年收入的百分比。水可负担额外的度量是在给定的工资需要工作，交水费的小时数。对全市的平均综合供水和下水道法案是由最低的五分之一最低小时工资标准划分，每个人口普查。对于每个人口普查，分别聚集到城市和地区的平均水平时，被应用的权重。合并家庭用水和污水法案由当时的最低工资分配，以决定需要工作付出的水/废水法案小时数。该研究的数据被编译成社区推广在线数据可视化工具。对于每一个社区，这包括水速度升级，在过去10年的可视化，相比于如何在该地区的家庭收入发生了变化，在过去10年。在我们的文献综述和小组讨论，这个问题出现的是怎么考虑的可支配收入，并与水相比成本不必要的费用。我们最终决定不将其纳入我们的水负担能力指数，而是改为提供的计算旁边负担水平均水费的在线工具平均住房和运输成本市级估计。因为每一个社区都是独一无二的，没有单尺寸适合所有水质可用性解决方案。各种因素各种因素而异，各种各样地影响负担能力政策和方案包括：社会人口统计学特征，社区财务和管理能力，水系统年龄，源水质和数量，客户群的规模，气候变化的脆弱性，住房和土地使用特性，以及客户用水模式。水性负担能力解决方案可以大致分为五种策略，包括：降低成本，促进水效，利率设计和政策，加强客户援助计划，并难以达到人口。简要讨论了这些策略中的每一个，包括定义，专业/缺点，实施考虑因素，来自国家的案例以及建议。

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