Starting in July, Brookfield residents will see their water bills go up just a smidge.
At the village board’s May 28 meeting, trustees agreed to increase water rates in town by about 2% for water used in the next year, starting June 1. The increase is being passed down to residents after the city of Chicago announced it would raise the rates for its customers, including the Brookfield-North Riverside Water Commission, which supplies Brookfield with its water.
As a result of the change, Brookfielders will owe $0.32 more per thousand gallons of water used, for a total of $16.10 per thousand gallons. The minimum amount charged to a Brookfield water customer over the next year will be $481.68, about $10 more than that customer paid this year.
Because Brookfield sends its water bills bimonthly, the minimum charge for each water customer will be $80.28. Over the past year, that amount was $78.68. These figures are only for the minimum possible bill, which covers up to 4,987 gallons of water in a two-month billing period. Individual households may see higher bills based on how much more water they use than that amount.
The Brookfield-North Riverside Water Commission also supplies water to North Riverside and La Grange Park. According to a village memo, La Grange Park’s new water rate is $16.57 per thousand gallons while North Riverside’s is $17.10 per thousand gallons.
“I was pleased to see that, of the three agencies provided water through this supplier, we’ve been able to keep our rates below the other two,” Trustee Jennifer Hendricks said at the meeting. “I think that says something.”
The same memo shows that Riverside’s rate next year will be $24.72 per thousand gallons of water.
This year’s water bill increase is the first in Brookfield since July 2022, when the village hiked up water rates by 14% to fund its lead service line replacement project starting this year. The village selected a contractor for the project earlier this month.
Brookfield’s water bills also include a sewer service fee equal to 27.1% of the amount charged for water, which goes toward covering costs associated with maintaining the sewers. That means each Brookfielder’s sewer fee will change based on how much they pay for water. Since July 2022, the sewer fee calculation has excluded the portion of each water bill that the village sets aside to cover the lead service line replacements, equal to about $1.66 per thousand gallons.
The Chicago Department of Water Management told the Brookfield-North Riverside Water Commission in February that it was increasing its water rates by 3.37% based on the Consumer Price Index inflation rate for 2023. Chicago is expected to continue raising its water rates each June using the previous year’s CPI, as it has done since 2016. The Brookfield-North Riverside Water Commission adjusts its rates each year in June to coincide with Chicago’s rate schedule.
