The discovery of the complaint issues developed in late 2022.  After its rate case was complete, Aqua filed its tariff schedule for the approved rate increases on May 23, 2022.  Unknown to me at the time was the fact that Aqua made a clerical error in its rates for New Garden customers.  They showed the 0 – 5,000 gallon rate band as zero cost – that consumption was included in the quarterly fixed cost.  (PDF page 29 of this filing: LINK)

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On June 15, 2022 Aqua filed an amendment that changed that rate band to $23.259 per thousand gallons.  (PDF page 5 of this filing: LINK)  But, I was not aware of the change at that time.

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The rate increase went into effect at the very end of a billing period.  Therefore, the first bills we received only two days out of 91 were at the higher rate.  The increase was invisible.  The next bill in September had the full effect of the rate increase.  Then, people were shocked.  I fielded a number of phone calls from nearby residents and something was very wrong.  Their bills were not consistent with the May 19, 2022 tariff filing.  Eventually I found out about Aqua’s revised filing and our bills were indeed consistent with it. 

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However, that revised tariff filing had an interesting statement: “Page 10.11 should be labeled as Base with no allowance, Excess 1 should be labeled as 0 to 15,000 gallons consistent with the rate and block structure from Exhibit 5-B Compliance, pages 6, 12 and 87 through 89”.  That “consistent with the rate and block  structure …” caught my eye and I started investigating.  I found Aqua’s data to be very opaque (LINK).  I spent considerable time and effort to transform that data into something that made sense and reflected exactly what Aqua had filed.  That turned out to be the following data table: