When local groundwater production fees rise soon, a major cause of higher water bills will be the relentless City of Conroe-led litigation which challenges the authority of the Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District to impose water production limits on large-volume water users and others.
Conroe’s taxpayer-funded litigation against the district — with the mission to ensure sustainable, cost-effective water supplies for Montgomery County’s current and future needs — forced the district to incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs which will be passed on to residents through higher groundwater pumpage fees.
For the past 10 years, the district’s groundwater pumpage fee, which is included in local water/sewer bills, has averaged less than 60 cents per 10,000 gallons. This is less than 1 percent of the typical residential customer water/sewer bill. The district’s water use fee increased this year to 75 cents per 10,000 gallons and is projected to rise again in 2018… Read more from YourConroeNews.com