In 2024, West Virginia was the most expensive U.S. state regarding water rates, with an average monthly bill of almost 100 U.S. dollars. On the contrary, the state with the lowest average water bill during the same period was Vermont and Wisconsin.

The price of tap water in the United States varied greatly from city to city in 2021. One of the most expensive cities for tap water in the U.S. is San Francisco, where one cubic meter costs an average of 6.07 U.S. dollars per cubic meter. In comparison, citizens in the Arizona state capital of Phoenix paid, on average, 0.96 U.S. dollars per cubic meter. This is roughly 63 percent lower than the U.S. average.

Rising water bills in the U.S.

Over the past decade, water bills in the U.S. have increased considerably in a number of major cities. In Austin, Texas, water bills rose by 869 U.S. dollars between 2010 and 2018, an increase of 154 percent. The sharp rising costs has left many in the United States with unaffordable water bills, especially in low income areas in cities such as New Orleans, Cleveland, and Santa Fe.

U.S. water crisis

One of the reasons for the rising water bills in the U.S. is the aging and deteriorating water infrastructure. In addition to rising bills, outdated treatment plants with leaking pipes have resulted in harmful toxins and chemicals contaminating drinking water. A number of highly populated cities in the U.S. have been found to have high concentrations of PFAs in tap water, exposing millions of people to potentially unsafe drinking water.

An average U.S. family of four pays about 72.93 U.S. dollars for water every month as of 2019, if each person used about 100 gallons per day. The price index of water and sewage maintenance have increased in recent years as infrastructure continues to age across the United States.

Setting water rates

Cities that have increased prices in water, generally use the increased rate to improve infrastructure. Families generally pay a fixed charge every month which is independent of water consumption, and a variable charge which is related to the amount of water used. Higher fixed charges are more commonly used to ensure revenue stability due to increased pipe repair costs, however, it reduces the incentive to conserve water and may punish households that use less water.

Water prices worldwide

Water prices vary across the countries and cities due to the various processes that are used to assign a price. Utilities generally set a water rate or tariff based on costs of water treatment, water storage, transport, wastewater treatment and collection, and other administrative operations. On the other hand, direct abstraction of water from sources such as lakes, is usually not charged, however, some countries require payment based on volume or abstraction rights.

This statistic provides the average cost of industrial water and sewage in the United States between 2001 and 2013, based on the largest 50 cities in the country. In 2013, the typical industrial cost of 10 million gallons of billable water use reached a monthly rate of 52,520 U.S. dollars.

Public Water Systems (PWS) submit their annual reports with rate information using the Electronic Annual Report (EAR) submission process on the Drinking Water Information Clearinghouse (DRINC) portal, which is reviewed, and manually updated into the Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS). This includes the water rates reported by PWS in the EAR for years 2014 and 2015.

This repository documents the Open Water Rate Specification (OWRS), a machine-readable format for specifying and sharing water rate information. OWRS is designed for analysts, economists, and software developers interested in analyzing water rates. OWRS attempts to fully encode a water utility's rate structure and pricing schedules in a form that is easy to store, share, modify and apply programmatically.

State, 2016 –2020; County, 2020. The report includes both state and county level water fluoridation data generated from the Water Fluoridation Reporting System (WFRS). State level statistics include data from the biennial report originally published at https://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/statistics/reference_stats.htm. State and county data include percentage of people, number of people, and number of water systems receiving fluoridated water. County level data is not displayed for all states. Participation in sharing county level data is voluntary and state programs determine if data will be shown.

ANOVA Sensitivity Analysis.

In the past ten years, the monthly combined water and sewer bills in the United States have increased constantly. The monthly water and sewage utility bills in 2023 amounted to approximately 120.7 U.S. dollars, representing an increase of 3.9 percent compared to the previous year.

Water Resources, Soil Protection and Waste Management - Concessions Area - Updating of tariffs for the calculation of state-owned fees for the derivation of public water defined in the types of use by Article 8 of Regional Law 29 April 2013 n.2. Processing based on the tables present in determination G03459 of 04/08/2016 (B.U. R. Lazio Suppl. 14/04/2016, n. 1) and determination G04790 of 04/13/2017 (B.U. R. Lazio P. I-II 26/04/ 2017, no. 33)

Affordability Assessment (in 2014 dollars).

Graph and download economic data for Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Water and Sewer and Trash Collection Services in U.S. City Average (CUSR0000SEHG) from Dec 1997 to May 2025 about water, urban, consumer, services, CPI, inflation, price index, indexes, price, and USA.

The cost of providing safe, reliable water services in the United States is increasing for utilities and their customers, raising questions about the scale and scope of water affordability challenges. How we measure and understand water affordability is debated. Here, we developed an open and repeatable approach that calculates five affordability metrics, including a new metric that combines affordability prevalence and burden along a continuum. We calculated these metrics for multiple volumes of water usage (from 0 to 16,000 gallons per month) using rate data available in 2020 at the scale of census block groups and service areas. We applied this approach to 1,791 utilities in four states (California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Texas), which cumulatively serve 72 million persons. We found 77% of utilities had more than 20% of their population below 200% of the federal poverty level, suggesting widespread poverty contributes to affordability challenges for many utilities. Minimum wage earners spend more than a day of labor per month to pay water bills for relatively low usage (4,000 gallons per month) in 67% of utilities, but upwards of 3 days of labor at higher volumes (12,000 gallons per month) in 29% of utilities. Depending on how much water a household uses, our results suggest a tenth to a third of households are working more than a day each month to afford their water bills. We developed an interactive data visualization tool to bring greater transparency to water affordability by allowing users to explore affordability at the block group and utility scale at different volumes of usage. The underlying data in the visualization tool can be expanded and updated over time, further increasing the transparency and understanding of water affordability in the U.S. ... [Read More]

The State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) conducts regular surveys of sewer rates and connection (capacity) fees charged by wastewater agencies. This dataset includes all the raw data submitted by the agencies, including the variable and flat rate information and all the other questions for the survey years of FY 2012-2013, FY 2014-2015, FY 2016-2017 and Calendar Year 2018. Only includes surveys submitted by Public Water Agencies.

Municipal-level population characteristics, cost of water, and water utility policies.

Percentage of systems with extreme water bills by state and ownership type.

In California, water systems, submit annual operational data such as demographics, water production, water demand, and retail rates to the State Water Resources Control Board. The State Water Resources Control Board publishes data in a flat file text format (https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/drinking_water/certlic/drinkingwater/ear.html). From 2013-2019, distinct data was published for small and large systems. Since 2020, data is combined in a single file.

This Hydroshare repository publishes user-friendly versions of the 2020-2022 eAR files, which were created to improve accessibility. Flat files of raw data were formatted to have all questions associated with a water system (PWSID) on one line. This allows for data to be viewed and analyzed in typical worksheet software programs.

This repository contains 1) Python script templates for parsing the 2020, 2021, and 2022 flat data files, and 2) the formatted eAR data files, saved as an Excel worksheet. There are separate Python scripts for parsing 2020 data and 2021/2022

Use of the script and files is permitted with attribution. Users are solely responsible for any issues that arise in using or applying data. If any errors are spotted, please contact the author.

Data are provided at monthly time steps in one-degree quadrangles (i.e., 1° x 1° spatial resolution) that cover the state of Texas. The gross lake evaporation rate is defined as water loss caused by evaporation from the lake surface.

These data were collected to support a drought-vulnerability assessment and near real-time drought awareness web tool for public water systems (PWS) on surface water supply in West Virginia. PWS withdrawal rates were evaluated against USGS low-flow stream statistics, modeled streamflow from the National Water Model, and thresholds from state drought response guidelines and ecological-flow literature. Other PWS information relevant to water management, including flow regulation and water storage is included. Description of Data: These data are available in Excel (.xlsx) files and comma-separated text files (.csv) for access in nonproprietary formats. The "sites" file contains attribute information for each PWS intake, including flow regulation and reservoirs. The "wd" file contains the monthly withdrawal information used to generate summary statistics. Data Sources: These data were not collected by the USGS. Monthly water withdrawal data for public water systems (PWS) was provided by West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection's Large Quantity User (LQU) reporting program. These data were used to calculate monthly withdrawal rates for selected PWS using surface water supply. The LQU dataset is self-reported. Basic quality control checks, including summary statistics, box plots, and time series plots were performed and data-entry errors were corrected when identified. PWS with redundant intakes on the same waterbody (primary and secondary) had withdrawals from the secondary intake (ID007, ID073, ID084, ID098, and ID101) reassigned to the primary intake and the secondary intake was removed from further analysis. Streamflow regulation and minimum flows were determined by a GIS tool developed by the Technical Applications and GIS Unit of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP). The presence and storage capacity of reservoirs was determined by review of information from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' National Inventory of Dams. The presence of smaller dams and weirs was determined by aerial or satellite imagery and noted, but no further effort was made to estimate storage capacity or impact on streamflow. Note: Disclosing specific location information for PWS intakes conflicts with West Virginia state law and USGS policy. For this publicly-accessible USGS Data Release and the near real-time drought awareness web tool, PWS locations are aggregated to the county or 10-digit hydrologic unit code (HUC10) watershed. Further discussion of data, methods, analysis, and limitations are included in the associated USGS Open File Report 2023-XXXX.

Graph and download economic data for Total Public Construction Spending: Water Supply in the United States (PBWSCONS) from Jan 2002 to May 2025 about water, public, supplies, expenditures, construction, and USA.