Water privatization is coming under renewed scrutiny from Pa. lawmakers and regulators as consumers sour on rate increases
The biggest for-profit water utility in Pennsylvania announced in November that it planned to collect an additional $204 million from customers — less than a year after the company’s last rate hike.
It may have been a major strategic error.
Over the next couple months, public hearings held by the state’s utility regulator were packed with frustrated ratepayers whose complaints were echoed by politicians — notwithstanding Pennsylvania American Water’s assurances that the revenue would help fund $1 billion in upgrades to water and sewer plants and other infrastructure. An investment analyst who follows utilities later wrote that he’d been attending such rate case hearings for years and had “never seen anything like those we attended in recent days.”