A new agreement on the North Texas Municipal Water District’s rate structure will allow cost sharing to be phased in for its member cities over the next 13 years. That change could have a ripple effect on consumer water bills in Frisco, McKinney, Plano, Richardson and the district’s nine other member cities.
Representatives from each of the district’s 13 member cities signed an amended wholesale water services contract Oct. 29 at the district’s headquarters in Wylie. A separate agreement approved by the North Texas Municipal Water District and its member cities will settle the wholesale water rate cases that are pending before the Public Utility Commission of Texas.
Those cases came about after the cities of Plano, Richardson, Garland and Mesquite argued that under the previous contract, they had paid a combined $275 million in recent years for water their residents and businesses did not use.
The new agreement includes an updated allocation method developed by the cities. It will gradually adjust the annual water commitments for each city over the next eight years to more closely align with their historical water use. Then in 2029, that allocation method will move to a combination of the new annual minimums and actual water used. Beginning in 2033, the annual minimum for each member city will be based on a five-year rolling average of actual consumption.
