Columbia utility company looking to raise rates by almost 150% over the next five years

COLUMBIA, Tenn. (WSMV) - Columbia Power and Water Systems (CPWS) is looking to raise rates on customers by almost 150 percent over the next five years to pay for a project they say would alleviate some of the area’s drought issues.

The utility company is planning a $520 million project that would move their intake in the Duck River downstream and allow them to increase their intake from 20 million to 32 million gallons per day. The project would also build a new water treatment facility to process the increase. They’re planning to break ground in 2026 and have the project finished by 2029.

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CPWS says it has secured enough state and federal loans to cover about 80 percent of the cost, but the rest of the funding will have to be made up through the rate increases.

“The last knob you turn is the rates on your customers, grandma and grandpa who have lived there their whole life,” CPWS President and CEO Jonathan Hardin told WSMV in November. “You do your very best to make that as minimal as possible.”

CWPS is proposing a 20 percent rate increase each year for the next five years. By 2031, that adds up to an almost 150% increase for customers. A CPWS spokesperson told WSMV they may be able to implement lower percentage increases in years three, four and five as the project progresses.

The Columbia City Council will consider approving the rate changes at their meeting on Thursday, December 11. They would have to pass a second reading before being officially approved.

More than 250,000 people rely on the Duck River to supply their drinking water, but as the population grows, activists and officials are worried the river will run dry.

“We are already at a point where we are turning away business and industry in this county because they can’t have the water provided that they need,” said Jason Gilliam, a board member for the Maury County Water System.

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Last winter, Governor Bill Lee created the Duck River Watershed Planning Partnership and tasked the group with finding long-term solutions to the Duck River’s water crisis. Some of the potential solutions they’ve discussed include building a pipeline to bring in water from the Tennessee River, raising the existing Normandy Dam to expand its reservoir or even revisiting the abandoned Columbia Dam project.

But all of those solutions will take years at best, and in the meantime, more and more people are relying on the Duck River to supply their water. CPWS says the project they’re planning could allow them to continue to supply water to their growing number of customers as the Planning Partnership continues to work to find a longer-term fix.

But Gilliam says the project is too small of a solution at too high a cost, and says there are other things that can be done in the meantime.

“It’s a huge increase and it’s not necessary,” Gilliam said. “We can find cheaper water.”

Right now, Maury County Water System buys water from CPWS, but Gilliam says they’re looking at ways to get water elsewhere.

“We’ve already got a project underway with H.B. & T.S,” he said. “We’re going to connect with them at the Williamson County line, and that’s going to give us three million gallons of water a day more than we’re getting right now, with the opportunity to increase that exponentially.”

Others have also raised concerns about the impact of CPWS taking an additional 12 million gallons of water per day out of the Duck River when it’s already struggling, especially because CPWS only serves a fraction of the people who rely on the river for their water supply.

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