Posted: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:00 AM - 14,164 Readers

By: Jim Bergamo

Some Travis County residents are gearing up for a battle with a utility company over a proposed water rate hike.

It's not the water in Lake Travis that's a concern to nearby residents of the Inverness Point and Crosswind subdivisions.  It's their tap water.

The 135 residents who get their water supplied from Southwest Water Company say they are hunkering down for a fight over a water rate hike.  They were notified back in September.

"I opened the mail on a Saturday morning and had to read the letter about three times," said Andrew Forsythe, who is one of the residents fighting the proposed rate hike.

The double take was due to a double the rate proposed hike.

"With this immediate increase we've gone from $95 a month for 10,000 gallons, to $205 a month," said Forsythe.

Southwest Water Company tells KVUE this is the first rate increase in six years for residents of Inverness and Crosswind.  In a statement the company says the increase is due to "the costs for items such as raw water, labor, chemicals, electricity and insurance that have increased. We have invested over $800,000 in upgrades and improvements to the water system."

However, residents say the real reason for the increase is because in 2006 Southwest Water embarked on an expansion program based on triple the anticipated growth in the area; growth that never occurred due to the recession.

"It's a wonderful business deal," said Forsythe. "If that growth had played out they would have gotten the extra profits, but when it didn't, it appears to us, they decided to saddle us with all the extra cost."

That's not the only cost they face. If residents and representatives from Southwest Water Company cannot reach an agreement, the residents will have to bear the cost of not only their legal representatives and engineers to continue the fight, they'll have to pay Southwest's legal and engineering fees as well.

"We can't afford that," said Janet Thomas, one of the residents who is fighting the rate hike.  "If they can do that to us, a very small community of 135 rate payers, they can do it to anybody."

A preliminary hearing is scheduled to take place Monday, March 21 before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) which is the state agency that approves or disallows any proposed water rate increases.