LISBON – The Public Utilities Commission has suspended the Lisbon Water Department’s proposed 50.19 percent rate hike for nine months at the request of customers.
The suspension is retroactive to Aug. 31, when the increase was to take effect.
In a letter to the Water Department, the PUC acknowledged receipt of a rate hike request July 1. Later, the commission received a petition signed by 497 water customers asking for a suspension and an investigation into the need for a hike.
Lisbon Water Department General Manager Paul Adams said Wednesday the Lisbon Board of Water Commissioners and its attorney will meet before making a decision on how to proceed.
“We have 10 days to appeal the PUC order,” he said. “We’re not going to do that. If that many people, 497, feel that way about it,” he said, “we’re going to move forward to resolve this. We’ll work with customers and the PUC” to find a way to do what’s fair.
The “town is working with us helping to make bond payments,” he said, the first of which is due in October, and “we don’t have the revenue to make it,” Adams said.
Selectmen this week voted to make that first payment of $166,248.55 on a $3 million bond approved by voters last year to pay for improving water quality standards mandated by state and federal law.
When proposing the rate increase, the Water Department cited additional operational and debt service costs from construction of a well and filtration plant, a new building for the department and installation of a waste main in Upland Road.
The water commissioners, who are independently elected, are “trying to look out for the interests of the town and customers,” Adams told residents at a public hearing in early August. “A lot of work needed to be done that wasn’t taken care of in the past.”
The current rate is $22 per 1,200 cubic feet of water used per quarter. The rate hike would have made it $33.
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