I was paying a few bills yesterday and for some reason took a closer look at my water bill. It only comes every three months since that’s just the way they choose to bill it. I’m all for it since I don’t have to write a check and use a stamp every month, but that’s neither here nor there. What struck me was the breakdown of all the charges:

Customer Charge: 10.23
Usage Charge: 24.25
Primacy: 0.27
Fire Hydrant Service: 6.21
Service Line Protection Charge: 3.00
Gross Receipts Tax: 2.14

Grand Total: 46.10

I’ll preface the following comments by saying that $46 is really not all that much when you consider that it’s for 3 months worth of service. Even so, there are a few things that I have a difficult time getting my head around. For starters, I noticed that my actual water usage only accounts for about half of my total bill. This is the only thing that I have control over. If I were to cut my usage by 20%, I would only see a cost savings of 10%.

And what exactly is Primacy? It took a little digging, but I finally found a pdf that explains what the primacy fee means in Missouri. It supports the efforts to ensure that we’re provided adequate water that is safe to drink. I thought that was just part of what we were paying anyway, but apparently it needs to be a separate line item.

I was also surprised to see the Fire Hydrant Service charge. I have yet to use a fire hydrant ever, and once again thought that these were maintained and paid for with general tax dollars. I also can’t imagine that it takes $2 per month from every Missouri resident to pay for fire hydrants that seem to be to be pretty low maintenance.

Have you ever taken the time to look over your bills and all of the line items that you’re being charged? Were you surprised by what you found? I don’t really think there’s anything that I can do about any of these charges, but they are a little perplexing.

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