This story has been updated with comments from BWW interim General Manager Darryl Jones.

For the sixth year in a row, customers of Birmingham Water Works are likely to see a rate hike in 2025. The proposed 4.9% increase comes as some residents continue to complain about receiving exorbitant water bills or no bills at all.

The Birmingham Water Works Board approved a preliminary budget plan on Oct. 23 that includes the rate increase and funding to begin buying the meters needed to switch to an automated-meter-reading system – a shift slated to happen in 2028.

A public hearing on the proposed budget will take place Monday, Nov. 4, at 5:30 p.m. at the BWW’s main office, at 3600 First Ave. N.

BWW is the largest water system in Alabama, providing service to approximately 770,000 people in Birmingham and Jefferson, Shelby, St. Clair, Blount and Walker counties. The proposed budget consists of a $142 million operating budget – up from $137 million in 2024 – and a capital budget of $115 million – an increase from $84 million in 2024. The capital budget includes $10 million for automated meters.

A residential customer who uses the average amount of water – 6 CCF or 4,488 gallons per month – would pay $2.14 more per month under the proposed rate increase. This would be in addition to a 3.49% increase in sewer volumetric and base charges that went into effect Oct. 1 for joint customers of BWW and the Jefferson County sewer system.

While BWW handles billing for those joint customers, the Jefferson County Commission sets sewer rates.

The 2025 BWW budget proposal also includes a change to the utility’s three-tiered billing structure. The water-usage threshold for the highest-rate tier would drop from 15 CCF to 12 CCF.

BWW interim General Manager Darryl Jones said the rate increase is needed to cover higher operating costs related to equipment, vehicles, fuel, labor, electricity, chemicals, testing for regulatory compliance, replacing old pipelines and updating the metering system.

“We’re a big organization,” Jones said. “We live and die based on the materials and equipment that we use. So, all those costs have gone up.”

Jefferson County Commissioner Shelia Tyson, who addressed the BWW board at its meeting, said the following day that the board shouldn’t raise rates until billing problems are remedied. “How can you add charges and you haven’t fixed problems yet?” she asked.

Tyson said residents have been complaining about unreasonable water bills for 15 years, and she’s been receiving at least four phone calls per week from constituents since she recently began looking into complaints.

“A residential bill of a two-bedroom house shouldn’t be $1,000 or $3,000,” Tyson said. “It’s just common sense. Anyone in billing should pull that and put it in a troubleshooting basket and let somebody find out why is this bill so high.”

A billing-system mechanism for doing that was discussed at the Oct. 23 meeting, according to reporting by WBRC. The system flags “implausibles” – bills outside of normal parameters for their respective accounts. The number of implausibles dropped from 25,230 in July to 13,121 in September, the utility reported.

In at least one case, the Water Works had an implausible reading on an account but did not notify or bill the customer. Birmingham resident Claire Ahalt eventually received a bill for $7,000, though charges were later cleared. She hired a plumber who discovered a massive leak under her front yard.

Jones said when the system flags an implausible reading, a bill is not sent to the customer until a water works staff member physically reads the meter and a double-checked bill is generated. This can cause bills to arrive late, he said, but the due date for the month’s bill is unchanged, to avoid disrupting the normal billing cycle. He advises residents to pay their bill on time each month, even if BWW does not release a bill. Customers could pay the same amount they paid the previous month. He also recommended calling BWW to inquire about missing bills.

Tyson said she began receiving complaints about missing bills three or four years ago. She said some constituents who have called her about extremely high bills say water-utility staff told them their meter wasn’t read and the amount they were billed was a “default.”

When water utilities are not able to read meters every month, they often use estimated billing instead. Jones said BWW estimates bills based on normal usage for each account. The utility also reported Oct. 23 the number of estimated bills has fallen, from 8,430 in July to 1,263 in September.

Jones said some residents have gotten extremely high bills because their accounts were closed due to lack of payment, but BWW did not physically disconnect service, so they continued to receive water. The Water Works is catching up on disconnecting those lines now, Jones said, and when customers re-establish service, back payments for the amount of water used are due. He said BWW will work with those customers to make payment arrangements.

The drops in estimated bills and implausible readings were attributed in the Oct. 23 meeting to the leadership of Jones, who began serving in the role in June after former General Manager Michael Johnson retired.

Jones said on Oct. 31 that recent billing department improvements are the result of adhering more closely to systems that were in place before the COVID-19 pandemic. Jones previously worked as assistant general manager for BWW for 13 years, retiring in 2019.

“So we haven’t created anything new,” Jones said. “We got out of sync with the systems we had in place.”

He said supply-chain issues related to the pandemic caused a shortage of vehicles used for meter reading. Fourteen or 15 vehicles have been added to the BWW fleet since June, he said.

“We corrected some things that may not have been up to current standards, and now we’re working a backlog of stuff that we were behind on,” Jones said. “We try to make sure we’re more efficient in what we do. And that’s what’s happening – the efficiency is getting back to the level that we want to be at.”

Tyson said she delivered about 15 of her constituents’ bills to BWW Oct. 23, along with questions about those bills. She said BWW staff told her they would look into the bills and get back to her.

She thanked the BWW board of directors for starting the automated-meter program and urged them to move forward quickly. Smart meters would prevent most billing problems residents are experiencing, she said.

“I’m almost for sure they would be solved,” Tyson said. “We know that if there are automatic meters, at least all customer meters will be read.”

In response to the current timeline of an automated system launching in 2028, Tyson said: “They need to fix their billing problem before then.”

She said she will personally reach out to constituents who have contacted her about their water bills and encourage them to attend the public hearing Nov. 4. She’s developing a plan to reach other constituents, too, perhaps with a robocall.

“It’s the silent voices, the people who really don’t have a voice, and the people that really just don’t know what to do – they’re too old or sick – they need to be in that meeting,” she said.

Jones said the BWW Board will take public comments into account and make a decision about the rate increase at a meeting later in November. No customer wants to see a rate increase, he said.

“Our job is to explain why we have to have it and how it’s going to benefit the customer,” Jones said. “And hopefully we can do that well enough. We’ve done a lot of work since I’ve been back to try to improve our operations, to be as efficient as possible, to be good stewards of the money and resources that have been assigned to us.”

Birmingham Water Works Rate Increases

• 2025 – 4.9% (proposed)
• 2024 – 4.8%
• 2023 – 3.9%
• 2022 – 3.9%
• 2021 – 3.9%

2020 – 3.9%