PUC promises about an extra 144 bucks in your pocket next year

The average residential PUC customer will be paying about $12 less per month on their combined electric and water bill in 2017.

“That’s good news for Sault Ste. Marie in general,” said Dominic Parrella, PUC president and CEO, speaking to SooToday after the Public Utilities Commission approved its 2017 budget at its meeting Thursday.

“It took a lot of work from both us and others to get us to the best price,” said Giordan Zin, PUC supervisor of communications.

The Public Utilities Commission is the division of PUC Services Inc. which owns the water supply and distribution infrastructure and is responsible for providing safe and reliable water at cost to customers within the Sault and a part of Batchewana First Nation’s Rankin Reserve.

The Sault’s rates are the lowest among Northern Ontario communities and among the lowest in Ontario, PUC officials said.

The province’s previously-announced eight per cent rebate on electricity bills will ultimately lead to a 10 per cent reduction on the average electric bill for PUC customers.

There will be a small, 68 cent increase on the electricity delivery charge per month, needed to pay for the PUC’s replacing of poles, switches and rebuilding of substations.

In addition, there will be an increase of $2.86 (not including the City’s sewage charge) on customers’ water bills per month in 2017.

That increase, the PUC said, is necessary to pay for a $1 million upgrade to its Water Treatment Plant, located on Second Line between Town Line Road and Carpin Beach Road.

The PUC will go to city council in 2017 to seek approval to borrow that $1 million.

That will bring the amount of money the PUC has borrowed to $10 million.

But when all the numbers are crunched, the $12 decrease per month for PUC customers on their combined electric and water bill in 2017 will still be there.

PUC officials also said Thursday that 3,300 of 3,700 east end customers contacted agreed to take part in its telephone survey regarding water quality in that area of the city.

“A lot of people said ‘yes I had a problem with the water but not anymore’ and others said ‘there’s still a problem with the taste and the colour,’ it was a mixed bag of results,’” Zin said.

“What we wanted to know was exactly where in the east end the problems were, and that’s how this telephone survey helped us…we’ll use that information geographically, and that will lead into our water main relining program.”

“We’re trending in the right direction…every day we get fewer and fewer calls (about water quality in the east end),” Zin said.

The PUC used a water main relining technique to improve water quality on Irwin and Tuckett Streets in the east end earlier this fall.

The company hopes to resume water main relining in 2018, after next year’s upgrade to the Water Treatment Plant.