The San Antonio Water System plans to raise its rates as it prepares to invest $3.2 billion in its infrastructure over the next four years.
SAWS board members voted 7-0 on May 19 to send its rate increase plan to San Antonio City Council, which will have the final say.
SAWS officials said upgrades to its water system range from replacing water mains and upgrading pump stations to retrofits of water recycling plants.
Rates would climb every year for the next four years. SAWS officials said they spread them out to have a more gradual impact. Increases in 2026 and 2027 will be set.
The utility plans to revisit rate changes in 2028 and 2029 once it sees how much revenue it has and how much more money is needed for infrastructure investments.
San Antonio City Council will weigh in at a meeting on either June 10 or 11 and then vote for final approval during an A session on June 18, according to SAWS officials. Residents can sign up to comment once agendas for those meetings are posted on the city’s website.
SAWS water rates depend on the kind of customer, how much water they use and whether or not they live in city limits.
Water rates for low-income residents
Low-income households enrolled in SAWS’ Uplift Program won’t see their bills change at all with this rate adjustment. SAWS is also expanding the eligibility requirements, letting more people enroll in the cost-saving program.
Uplift customers have a discounted rate structure, making water more affordable for San Antonio’s lowest-income residents.
That program was previously available to households at 125% of the federal poverty level, but SAWS increased the threshold to 150% of the poverty level, which is up to an annual household income of $49,500 for a family of four.
Uplift customers that use 5,000 gallons of water are charged $12.97 each month. Those that use 10,000 gallons are charged $33.35 each month.
What will most residents pay on their water bill?
The rate adjustment is complex, according to one of SAWS vice presidents, Cecilia Vasquez. The changes are based on different factors — like living inside or outside city limits, meter size, water usage and sewage flow rates.
SAWS has a rate calculator on its website that allows individual customers to see how their own bills will change. Anne Hayden, SAWS communications director, said much of the specific information residents need for the rate calculator is on the second page of their bill.
Most residents have a ⅝-inch meter. Impervious cover is used to calculate The City of San Antonio’s stormwater fee. That number for a property is listed on a customer’s bill and the city has a website that estimates impervious surface area on local properties.
Monthly water use is used to calculate water costs and the winter average is used to calculate sewer costs. Income levels show if residents qualify for the Uplift program.
But that’s just an average. Martha Wright, SAWS director of conservation, used estimates from a 2016 national residential water use study and said a family of two would use between 4,352 and 4,570 gallons of water each month. San Antonio was included in that study and Wright said indoor water use tends to be pretty similar across the U.S.
According to the rate calculator, that’s a monthly increase of around $4 this year and $16 by 2029 for the common ⅝-inch meter in city limits.
For a family of four, normal water usage is between 5,804 and 6,687 gallons each month. This means that consumer’s monthly bill would increase between by $4.45 and $4.77 this year. By 2029, their monthly bill could increase by $19.48.
What if I water my yard?
SAWS’ highest residential water users tend to be customers who water yards or gardens. Only about half of SAWS residential customers water their yards.
According to Wright, customers use an average of 2,000 gallons each time they water their yard. If a resident does that once a week, as allowed under current drought rules, that’s around 8,000 gallons per month.
Those customers would see their monthly bills increase by nearly $14, according to the rate calculator.
Hayden added that outdoor water use is not the same across the city. Some SAWS customers choose smaller hand watering. Some have large sprinkler systems. Yard watering tends to be concentrated in San Antonio’s North Side, but has spread to the Far West as growth has seeped outward, she added.
How would it affect apartment complex residents?
Not by much. San Antonio residents living in a building with four or more units do not have their own water bill. Instead, landlords receive the bill and are considered general class customers.
“Some complexes have submeters and charge their residents based on their actual use while others use a ratio system based on apartment square footage and/or occupancy to bill residents,” Hayden said in an email. “Rate adjustments would have a marginal impact to apartment residents if they are at a complex with only indoor use.”
According to the Texas Public Utility Commission, residents have the right to see the utility bill and verify a landlord’s charges for water.
What happens to businesses?
Businesses are also considered general class customers. Their water bills depend on how much water they used the year previously. Businesses that use more than they did last year pay more on those additional gallons.
The average business uses around 77,193 gallons per month, but it’s hard to put that average into a dollar figure that’s helpful for businesses, Wright said.
“That’s a very broad number,” she said. “That includes manufacturers. That includes a small, little insurance office. That’s a coffee shop.”
SAWS has released some averages for general class, or business and apartment, customers showing that they would see their average monthly bill increase by 6.1% this year and by a total of 33% by 2029.
Those with irrigation bills, which have a different rate structure than residential or general classes, for watering their properties would have those bills increase by an average of 32% between 2026 and 2029.
Why is SAWS doing this?
SAWS officials said the rate adjustment will fund dozens of large infrastructure improvements through 2029, including hundreds of millions of dollars for renovations and rehabilitations at water recycling plants, replacing water and sewer pipes and updating pump stations.
The utility discussed a list of major projects and identified them by city council district at a May 19 meeting, where SAWS staff frequently repeated a phrase.
“If delayed, we will see equipment failures which will result in regulatory violations,” said Cecilia Vasquez, a SAWS vice president, as she discussed proposed upgrades to the Steven M. Clouse Water Recycling Center this year.
That could impact SAWS’ services and lead to fines from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Environmental Protection Agency or even the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Those fines can range up to $25,000 per day for violation. If it’s a violation under consent decree, they could be $65,000 to $120,000. So the financial impact is pretty severe,” said Ed Guzman, the utility’s chief legal and ethics officer.
SAWS officials said the utility had made $2.6 billion in infrastructure improvements over the last five years without raising rates. Now, Vasquez said, the utility needed a rate increase so it could maintain its credit.
“We get to a point where we have no other additional ways to use our savings to use anything else to meet those metrics,” she said. “Our credit could be downgraded. If that were to happen, our interest rates moving forward would be higher. That’s more cost to the customers.”
The proposed rate adjustment would generate nearly $300 million within the next four years. That money isn’t enough to pay for SAWS’ $3.2 billion capital plan, but it is enough for the utility to begin borrowing money for its projects.
