The River Place Homeowners Association reached a settlement July 21 with the city of Austin regarding a lawsuit it filed in December protesting the city’s water and wastewater rates, board President Scott Crosby said at a July 29 HOA meeting.

River Place will be fully annexed by Austin in 2017. Under the annexation terms, the city took over supplying the community water and wastewater service from the River Place Municipal Utility District in mid-October.

Under the agreement, the city of Austin will refund River Place customers the amount it charged in excess of the rate the former MUD charged for October utility bills, the group’s attorney Randy Wilburn said. The total refund will be about $125,000 for the approximately 1,000 customers impacted by the charge, he said. The settlement is still subject to Austin City Council approval, he said.

Residents Laura and Tony Logan said they saw a spike in their water bill once Austin took over the utility services.

“We had about a 30 to 40 percent increase,” Laura Logan said. “We decreased our water usage quite a bit because we knew our rates were going up.”

The settlement provides the city will also make a one-time payment of $800,000, with about $50,000 allocated to attorney fees and the remainder will be used to pay for the MUD’s outstanding debt related to the cost to build the district’s water and wastewater systems, Wilburn said. The net effect of the MUD debt paydown will lower property taxes, he said.