Who will pay the higher price of water?
If the process of setting utility rates seem complicated, that’s because it is…and to be perfectly honest, the medium of television does not deal very well with complexities. But behind all the financial jargon relating to what the P.U.C. calls a seventeen percent revenue increase for Belize Water Services, one thing is clear: somebody’s going to pay more. According to the Public Utilities Commission, it’s won’t be the mass of small consumers. So who will pick up the multi-million dollar tab? Today that’s what I tried to find out.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
The reality may have yet to sink in, but this April high end consumers will bear the brunt of recently approved hikes in the price of water.
Restaurateurs and café owners tell News 5 that they plan to make sure wastage is curtailed, while laundromat representatives say the new rates will have quote “horrible” impacts on their trade.
But by all accounts, the sector of Belize society that will be swamped by the high rates is tourism.
The new water bill is the third hit the industry will have to absorb: the first was a twenty-eight percent hike in the hotel tax and a second was a seventy-five percent increase in airport exit fees.
Under the new rate structure, smaller consumers will see only minimal price hikes, but for customers who consume more than eight thousand gallons of water a month, will now have to pay thousands of dollars more for the same H20.
Marco Reyes, Financial Controller, Belize Biltmore Plaza
“Using last year’s figures, we consume on an annual basis, over three hundred thousand gallons [of water] per month. That translates to almost five thousand dollars per month cost to us. Using those exact figures, we are seeing a sixty-two percent increase, averaging almost six thousand seven hundred dollars per month.”
According to financial controller of Best Western Belize Biltmore Plaza, Marco Reyes, the restaurant and hotel will have to resort to creative alternative water sources.
Marco Reyes
“We were gearing towards the rainy season where we are trying to put in place catchments tanks and so forth so that we would be able to utilize the water and to save ourselves money. So I guess putting in water treatment plants and so forth so that we would be able to recycle water.”
But even more disappointing, Reyes says when he called B.W.S.L. to confirm the new rates, he was told they were not available as at this time Monday public announcement could only be considered hearsay.
Marco Reyes
“It’s a shock, this is the first month already that this is supposed to be in place and if they are going to be calculating our bills and can’t tell us how to calculate our bills, then we are trouble.”
According to Belize Water Services Limited, the informational pamphlets on the new rates will be made available to the general public within the month.
If hotels, restaurants, laundromats, and other major consumers take steps to utilize alternate cheaper sources of water, then the price hikes granted to B.W.S. will have little effect on their bottom line…in which case we may soon see the water company return to the P.U.C. for relief.
