Thus far as a community there has been many complaints which is not at all invalid as this is a 46% increase in water bills.  My family like others have budgets already in place for our household needs and for just our water to be increased that much it will hurt numerous households.  This is different from a cable provider or and electric company increasing their rates as we would have other options to look into for providers.  Aqua is the only supplier we have for water which no one could live without.  

Aqua is requesting an overall rate increase of $71.8 million per year in the total for all of its water and wastewater operations.  This covers investments in the system repairs and improvements that Aqua has already made since June 2012 and projected through March 2020.  It also covers the cost of operation and maintenance, essential to providing reliable utility service.  Since the last rate case, Aqua has invested approximately $2.2 billion in infrastructure and other service improvements – that’s an average capital investment of approximately $4,855 per customer.