Illinois mandates utilities report residents’ water usage to wastewater agencies

(The Center Square) – An Illinois state senator has concerns about a new law possibly allowing wastewater agencies to charge consumers more.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed House Bill 5459 into law earlier this month. The law mandates a public utility that provides drinking water services report water usage of a resident to a municipal wastewater agency upon request. Two senators opposed the measure in the Illinois Senate.

State Sen. Craig Wilcox, R-McHenry, said the reason why he voted against the measure was because water users do all kinds of things with water that doesn’t go into the wastewater system. For example: growing vegetables, washing cars and filling pools.

"What process are you asking wastewater agencies to do to give consumers an ability to challenge their rate for wastewater based on their water usage,” said Wilcox. “While you are putting an option for wastewater billing to be based on clean water usage, you’re not giving the ratepayer [the ability] to challenge or have a process, so that was the basis of opposing it.”

The law states that a public utility has to provide timely and accurate water usage data to the wastewater agency for purposes of calculating wastewater billings. Wilcox was asked if that data could be used to find out if a resident is in violation of a city ordinance. For example, if someone fills up a pool who didn’t get a permit from their municipality.

"I don’t know if my ‘no’ vote was based on what might sanitary districts do with this data, but it's a natural aspect of data that is collected and paid for through metering that was installed by one utility is being mandated to be given to other utilities and they don’t talk about the use of the data,” said Wilcox. “Now there is language in there that it could be used for ‘wastewater billing,’ but it doesn’t restrict it from being used in other manners.”

Wilcox admits aligning water usage with wastewater rates is likely the easiest avenue to determine a wastewater rate, but he argued not having a process for the consumer to challenge that some water usage did not go into the wastewater system is unfair. Some wastewater agencies base rates off the number of bedrooms a dwelling has.

“Even that comes with challenges,” he said. “A four bedroom house that once held a family of six and now is just a retired couple, water usage is significantly different. I get it. The easiest way, from the way we’ve set all our systems up, is to bill for wastewater service based on the known clean water usage per dwelling.”

Wilcox said the bill should have laid out a process in which a consumer could challenge their wastewater rate because consumers could give the dog a bath outside or water the flowers and none of that water sees the wastewater system so shouldn't be included when determining wastewater rates.

The bill passed unanimously in the House. Wilcox and state Sen. Jason Plummer, R-Edwardsville, were the only two “no” votes in the Senate.

The law takes effect Jan. 1, 2025.