{"id":436837,"date":"2025-12-10T02:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T02:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/436837\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T02:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T02:25:12","slug":"saws-needs-42-more-revenue-rate-change-debate-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/436837\/","title":{"rendered":"SAWS needs 42% more revenue; rate change debate coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN ANTONIO<\/strong> \u2013 The San Antonio Water System (SAWS) needs to fill up a larger bucket, and it\u2019s looking to customers to open the tap.<\/p>\n

The city-owned water utility expects it will needs to raise revenues across its water supply, water delivery and wastewater systems by nearly 42% over the next five years. The additional revenue would cover operating costs and billions of dollars worth of capital expenses, including upgrading wastewater treatment plants, replacing pipes and installing backup generators.<\/p>\n

The actual rates to cover the projected revenue needs haven\u2019t been proposed yet. Both the utility and Carollo Engineers, a consultant SAWS has hired to develop those revenue needs, said the numbers presented to trustees on Monday were not a direct translation for how much customers\u2019 bills will increase.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis does not mean that all of these rates are going up by these percentages, and it does not mean that bills \u2014 all bills are going up by this percentage,” said Jennifer Ivey from Carollo Engineers while presenting the various projections. \u201cWe still are working on the analysis to determine those actual rate increases and customer bill increases.”<\/p>\n

A slide from a presentation by Carollo Engineers to the SAWS Board of Trustees on Dec. 9, 2025. (Carollo Engineers)<\/p>\n

Ivey said her firm agreed to use the SAWS financial planning model and projections. She expects to return in January with recommended rates.<\/p>\n

SAWS trustees could vote on rates in March, though the San Antonio City Council would also have to approve them. If passed, the utility has indicated<\/a> the rates would likely take effect during the first half of 2026. <\/p>\n

SAWS rates last went up in 2020, though the utility also restructured its rate system ahead of 2023, which did not affect its overall revenue. The restructuring<\/a> resulted in many residential bills dropping, though there was an increase in commercial rates.<\/p>\n

Ivey and SAWS Vice President of Customer Experience and Strategic Initiatives Cecilia Velasquez said the new structure would remain in place.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, all of those rate structures will stay the same, whether it\u2019s two tiers, three tiers, five tiers, and all of the intricacies of that,\u201d Velasquez said. \u201cBut the rates in and of themselves will be updated.\u201d <\/p>\n

Though there are no concrete numbers yet, a rate hike isn\u2019t something most people would look forward to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, everything\u2019s just so expensive,\u201d Dionicio Neaves told KSAT. \u201cI mean, gas is crazy. I mean, you know, that\u2019s just another budget that we gotta figure out.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cA bigger bill doesn\u2019t help our pockets,\u201d Humberto Beltran said.<\/p>\n

CPS Energy officials have also said they plan to debate raising their rates next year. <\/p>\n

Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, who sits on the boards of both utilities, said it\u2019s not just that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s also what\u2019s going on more broadly, right, with the implementation of the \u2018One Big Beautiful Bill,\u2019 which will see cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP and SNAP, which then gets to the elasticity of some of these groups to actually pay, which is ultimately what I care about, right?\u201d Jones said during the SAWS board discussion.<\/p>\n

More recent City Hall coverage on KSAT: <\/b><\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 The San Antonio Water System (SAWS) needs to fill up a larger bucket, and it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":436838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,13239,746,7202,7203,19129,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-436837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-city-hall","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-san-antonio","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-saws","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-tx","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115692904487775315","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}