What is Sewer Averaging?

During the February billing cycle, the City recalculates your sewer average. When the City Council adopted the new rate structure in 2019, it included a measure to even out the bills throughout the year.

Our utility staff takes an average of the sewer charges a customer incurs throughout all the non-summer months (see above) and applies those to the summer months when usage spikes.

This change was implemented based on requests from the community. It ensures that residential customers will not be charged additional sewer consumption for any extra water that goes back into the ground during the summer months (i.e. watering lawns and gardens, sprinklers, filling pools) and provides customers the ability to more accurately budget their utility bills throughout the year.

If you have any questions about averaging or your utility bill in general, please contact our utility billing clerk at 360-384-4269 or utilitybilling@cityofferndale.org.