Utility Rates

2025 Water, Sewer and Stormwater Rates

The City of Washougal operates and maintains water, sewer and stormwater utilities, serving more than 18,150 customers. The safe and reliable delivery of these services is of utmost importance to each individual customer and to the overall health of our community. Utility systems are extremely complex and require a substantial financial investment to operate and maintain.  Establishing appropriate rates to support the operations of each utility is critically important to ensure the reliability and safety of these services to the community.

How are rates established?

To establish the new rates for each of the utilities, city staff worked with a 9-member Community Advisory Committee (CAC) along with an independent third-party consultant for over a year period.

The CAC was formed in a deliberative manner to ensure that it is representative of the full range of ratepayers in the city. The city required interested members of the community to apply to be on the CAC and provided information about the role and time commitment required. CAC members had diverse backgrounds, experience, and expertise, and include long-time and new community members, as well as individuals with experience in government, finance, and business, and administration. The CAC met six times over a nine-month period to receive detailed information on utility operations, revenue requirements, cost of service, and rate design.

The largest cost driver for providing utility services is, required capital facilities (infrastructure investments). To mitigate the impact of rate increases the group reviewed the cost-of-service, rate reinvestment funding, funding strategies (grants/loans), and capital programs to determine the best path forward.

When were the new rates set?

Rates for the 2024-2028 rate window were adopted on January 22, 2024. 

Where does revenue from customer-paid utility rates go?

The revenue received from customer-paid rates is, by law, consigned to individual enterprise accounts used exclusively for the cost of providing the utility service. This ensures that utility revenues and costs remain verifiable and separate from the General Fund, which is tax-funded and supports core municipal services such as police, fire, parks and streets.

The City of Washougal has always charged our own utilities a utility tax, which is a standard practice for public and private utilities (gas, phone, cable, etc). This year, and moving forward the utility tax that has been built-in to the rates will be separated out in all billings.  

How are the rates different from last year (2024)?