Water in New Hampshire

Most of the regulated water utilities in New Hampshire, as around the entire United States, continue to struggle with the challenges of complying with the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The result of this struggle is continued upward pressure on water rates. Water rates at present range from a low of $125 annually to a high of nearly $700 annually. The 1996 Amendments to the SDWA provided for a Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (SRF) to assist both public and privately-owned water systems in financing the costs of improvements needed to achieve compliance with SDWA requirements and to protect the public health objectives of the original act. The SRF program has placed particular emphasis on assisting smaller drinking water systems and those serving less affluent populations by providing greater funding flexibility and low interest rates on the funds. In addition, the Department of Environmental Services (DES) has been charged with developing guidelines for ensuring that newly approved systems have the technical, managerial, and financial resources to maintain compliance with requirements of the SDWA and to provide safe and adequate water. The Commission has approved financing requests from a number of its regulated utilities in the past few years under this program.

With recent drought conditions in the state, attention has been focused on the issue of water conservation. Chapter 64 of the Laws of 2000 called upon the Commission and DES to conduct a study of regulatory structures which encourage or discourage regional cooperation in drinking water resources management and conservation. This report is available on the DES web site and is linked below. When the report was issued the conservation issues identified were lack of a statewide policy; the effect of water demand management on consumption; the special circumstances of rate-regulated utilities where conservation efforts tend to depress the company’s rate of return; the effects of various rate-design approaches to conservation; local water use restriction issues; and funding issues for conservation projects. The Commission is currently considering recommendations from Staff with respect to new initiatives in water conservation. Staff’s report is linked below. During 2002, in response to drought conditions, the Commission considered tariff filings from two of its regulated water utilities where penalties could be imposed for violation of water use restrictions.