By JONATHAN SNYDER
There have been multiple increases throughout the 2020s for Bluffton residents’ sewer, water and electric bills.
The recent increase in electric bills in December of 2024 has been part of multiple increases. Electric rates have increased in 2022 and 2024, sewage rates have increased twice, while water rates increased in 2022.
According to Common Council member Scott Mentzer, the increases are due to multiple factors. While inflation throughout the 2020s played a factor, Mentzer noted that key infrastructure projects brought on the need for increases. Water filtration plant upgrades completed in 2021, along with a water tower and the wastewater treatment plant, have been the primary cause of rate increases for those specific utilities.
“We’ve got to take out debt … to handle those projects,” Mentzer said. “That debt gets rolled into the rate — That’s the only way to pay off the debt service.”
While Mentzer acknowledged that sewer rates are just above average for Indiana municipalities, the new wastewater plant should allow Bluffton to slowly move further down the pricing scale. Mentzer expects the new plant to last approximately 40 years. Mentzer also noted that while there have been increases, the Common Council tried to ensure that Bluffton is still at or lower than the midpoint for utilities.
“We have always shown where Bluffton falls within other cities in the region,” Mentzer said. “When we did the water increase, we were well below the average, and the water increase took us right about to the midpoint.”
Most infrastructure projects in recent years have been due to regulations set by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. IDEM cited the wastewater plant as a site that was beginning to fail before 2021. The water filtration plant needed replacement since 2019, before the project’s completion.
The electric increase is a different beast, however. Recent federal regulations have removed a majority of coal and gas-fired plants from auctions, the primary source of acquiring energy capacity for providers. In response, the city’s electric provider, Wolverine Power Cooperative, declared its rates would increase by approximately 6-7% in 2030. The electric rate increase intends to avoid a major spike in 2030, while funds from the increase will be collected in a slush fund to further ease the burden beyond 2030.
“There has to be a gas plant to take that gas and convert it to electricity,” Mentzer said in the council meeting on Dec. 3. “The cost to build gas plants, because of some of the regulations that have been put on, are so significantly high that people aren’t investing in new gas plants. The way to drive down cost is by increasing capacity … and right now, it’s not very cost-effective for these energy providers to build plants.”
While rates could go down once the debt service is paid off from the bonds, inflation over the bond cycle makes those decreases highly unlikely. Mentzer stated that while the city audits rates every year and tries to calculate future needs, the bonds also last 20 to 30 years. While Mentzer is open to tweaking rates down after the bond cycles, he also noted it is incredibly early to predict what rates will look like then.
“People don’t pay a lot of attention to utilities and the cost that we put into those things,” Mentzer said. “But when they don’t work, everybody notices right away. When the utility stops operating, it’s a big deal. I think we’re in a really good situation now, we’ve got new water infrastructure, we’ve got new sewer infrastructure and we continue to put not only new capacity in the electric infrastructure — But all of our increases have also included backup capacity in case something goes down.”
While maintenance for the new water and wastewater plants will need attention, the two projects that the city has targeted in the future are the Cherry street substation and the replacement of lead pipes in city infrastructure. Federal regulations state that pipes with lead need to be replaced by 2030, so the city needs plans and funds to replace them.
jonathan@news-banner.com
