Gennaro decries new water rate hike ‘Watergate’

Little progress has been made on giving city residents relief from huge yearly increases in their water bills - but there is a trickle of hope.
The New York State Assembly took up a bill on Wednesday May 27 that could possibly roll back the recent 14.5 percent rate hike, which is slated to go into effect on Tuesday, July 1 and would ease next year’s proposed increase.
However, “Without a senate version of the bill it goes nowhere,” said Shams Tarek, director of communications for City Councilmember James Gennaro.
“As far as we know, there’s no senate version of the bill,” Tarek added.
Gennaro has been fighting escalating rate increases in recent years, calling last year’s double-digit hike “New York’s own Watergate.”
Tarek said that there is a “chorus of opposition” to the hike, including more than 40 councilmembers, City Comptroller William Thompson and even the New York City Water Board’s chair, James T. B. Tripp. “The only person who can stop this is the mayor,” he said. “The Bloomberg administration so far hasn’t acted,” he added.
Tarek called this a “complex issue,” saying that the Water Board is an independent authority, which has to set the water rate high enough to pay all mandated expenses, which includes paying rent to the city for land used for water and sewer facilities. It then bills and collects the money.
“Some portion of the bill gets diverted into the general city fund,” he said, adding that by the year 2015, there would be $300 million in diversions unless the mayor agrees to revise the terms of the Water Board’s lease. “We are looking at a double-digit increase every year,” he said.
“[This is a] huge burden on the poor, working class and middle class,” Tarek added, because “often they have higher water bills than wealthy individuals.”
Money collected from the water bills also goes to other city agencies, such as the Department of Sanitation, which Tarek said receives $30 million a year and the Fire Department which receives $7.5 million a year.
Gennaro’s interest in this issue goes back years, because he is the chair of the Environmental Protection Committee. “He is the lead opponent of this,” Tarek said.
Recently, Gennaro attended a public meeting of the Water Board, and railed against the mayor’s refusal to renegotiate the Water Board’s lease.
“This is a very sad day for the water rate payers of New York City,” Gennaro said at the May 16 meeting. “The Water Board completely caved in to Mayor Bloomberg’s unfair and outrageous policy of diverting water rate revenues into the city’s general coffers.”
Earlier that week, he wrote two letters - one to Mayor Bloomberg and one to the Water Board. Both were signed by 41 of his colleagues on the council.
At the time, Gennaro proposed his own plan to reduce the water rate hike. In his plan, the rate would have increased by only 5.5 rather than 14.5 percent, by having the city charge the Water Board only enough to cover the mandated payments on water-related bonds.