Photo: Sonke Johnsen
Water customers from Raleigh, Garner, Rolesville, Wake Forest, Knightdale, Wendell and Zebulon pay a small monthly fee (around $0.57 per month for single family homes) to the City of Raleigh Watershed Protection Fund. This funds the city’s water protection program, the Upper Neuse Clean Water Initiative, as well as any drinking water treatment improvements or protective restoration projects. All of these programs work together to provide clean water that we use and drink!
Most water customers pay $0.15 per 1,000 gallons of water consumed to the City’s Watershed Protection Fee. This is true of all classes of customers, not just the residential category. For the average residential customer (single-family home), this comes out to about $0.57 per month, a small portion of a utility bill that includes water & sewer charges, solid waste, recycling and stormwater, which averages about $76 per month.
To learn more about the City of Raleigh Watershed Protection Fee, visit https://www.raleighnc.gov/business/content/FinUtilityBilling/Articles/UtilityBillingDepositFees.html.
This small amount from every water bill helps preserve water quality for thousands of people in the Triangle through land conservation and other efforts for water protection. It’s your contribution that makes clean water possible for us all.
The City of Raleigh has partnered with nonprofit conservation organizations in our community through the Upper Neuse Clean Water Initiative to help ensure our water remains clean for all. These groups have applied their passion and expertise to keep Raleigh and surrounding areas healthy, sustainable places for us to live.
These nonprofits don’t do this alone. Everyone has an important role to play in our clean water future.
Most of the area’s consumption is residential (64%), with the second-largest portion being commercial (around 25%). The rest is made up of industrial customers (Pepsi Bottling, Ajinomoto, Cargill, GlaxoSmithKline) and institutional customers (NC State University, Wake Med, Duke Hospital, Wake County Schools). Within these two categories are the largest consumers of clean water, but overall consumption is less than that of residential and commercial customers.
While the state of North Carolina offers several ways to fund clean water initiatives, most of those federal and state dollars get distributed among different projects across the state. With the monthly contribution from the City of Raleigh ratepayers, our dollars stay in the Triangle.
Upstream matters for YOU! Stay in the loop about keeping water clean for the Triangle. Sign up to get updates and alerts on conservation efforts that protect your water quality and provide drinking water. By joining this email list, you’ll receive updates from the Upstream Matters campaign and Initiative nonprofit partners.
Banner Photo: Caroline Gilmore
Additional Photos: Conservation Trust for North Carolina & Caroline Gilmore
