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ECUA Proposing Water, Sewer, Sanitation Rate Increases, Plus New Monthly Recycling Fee
July 21, 2023
The Emerald Coast Utilities Authority is proposing across the board rate increases for water, wastewater and sanitation services, plus a new monthly fee for customers that choose to recycle.
For sanitation, ECUA is proposing a 3.5% rate increase, raising the standard monthly rate for a 90-gallon container from $27.67 to $28.46. A $3 monthly fee for recycling customers is proposed, along with reduction of the cost of an extra garbage can from $4.60 to $2 per month. The $3 recycling fee is projected to generate $1.8 million for the Materials Recycling Facility.
ECUA is proposing a 4% rate increase for water and 6% for wastewater.
The ECUA board will consider the rate increases at their next meeting at 3 p.m. Tuesday, July 25. The board could decide to approve, reject or change any of the rates at that time.
ECUA customers have had optional curbside recycling at no charge since 2009. The current recycling facility (MRF) has been open since 2016.
ECUA Public Information Office Nathalie Bowers previously said residents putting items that can’t be recycled in the ECUA program into the recycling can has been a major problem, leading to the consideration of a recycling fee.
Comments
46 Responses to “ECUA Proposing Water, Sewer, Sanitation Rate Increases, Plus New Monthly Recycling Fee”
WHY did my monthly ECUA bill INCREASE 30.75? Over 105.00 a month for WHAT?
I am on disability and am eating CAT FOOD as it is!
The entire state has gone to hell!
Really this just has to STOP…. the state of Florida is the number 1 state ( USA) with the highest inflation. With so many who are on fixed income will have to make difficult choose – food or pay utilities. Last time back 9/2022 ECUA raise rate which come to find put it was for sewage and showed no reason as to why the rate hike or the amount that was said for hike didn’t reflex on bill it was more.
And I find it funny how I heard about this just last week to not give enough time for us the customer to attend this meeting.
You can have my recycle can and take the garbage can to replace with smaller one.
Well, the water quality is bad, no one will flush their toilets and you will have more garbage laying around the streets because folks can’t afford this utility. And as for a senior discount! 5 dollars off and a smaller can.. so the smaller can will be packed up with garbage and the big can is 1/2 full…same truck that picks it up …not rocket science. And recycle will be a thing in the past…wow………how about process improvement plan….project management?
Today is Tuesday 7/25 …I just stood there and watched the garbage man empty BOTH cans in the same truck and YOUR point is,??? yall wanna charge me more for the recycling can? Not happening
If y’all are going to be charging for recycle, no one’s going to want to recycle anymore so therefore go back to two pick up days a week instead of one!!
Wonder if they could make the recycle cans out of clear plastic, so driver sees non recyclables and passes the can by.
Hasn’t everything already gone up enough? This is ridiculous.
We can all complain about this but ECUA doesn’t care because others will continue their service while the other will stop there. I’m for one will also stop my service because it is not worth it anymore. I can burn or throw everything into one can. Times are getting harder and harder to survive with our government constantly adding more and more to our plate. USA is becoming a not so proud country.
ECUA manager is to be given a 3.75% merit increase plus the increase that other ECUA employees will get. Found this in the next meeting’s notes on their website this morning. I’m sure there are other tidbits of “waste”ful spending by the garbage governmental agency with increases in nearly every line item of the budget attributed to inflation. LOL!
I sent anemail to have my recycle can picked up. They missed picking up our street about half the timeanyway. Why should I go thru the trouble of sorting the trash, when they change the rules all the time when there sorting facility only operates about 6 months a year for the last two years.and now they want me to pay for the privledge.
Interesting. Everyone yells “Republican Rights” until it is time to let governments increase fees! You guys voted for this. Strange how there isn’t competition offered to keep ECUA in check. The idea of raising fees for less service is ridiculous. You know there is a major company in town who constantly raises their prices and that isn’t going so well for them. Oh by the way, you can get home internet from your wireless provider now. Why would they do that? When another company opens the door by raising prices all the time, that is exactly what happens. So keep yelling “republican rights” and you can keep paying higher and higher prices for everything including home insurance! If you like yelling that, then stop complaining!
The increases sure aren’t passed along to the employees in way of a raise. My spouse is a previous worker in sanitation and had to deal with equipment constantly breaking down which causes you to get behind on your route. When that happens they push you to still finish on time because they don’t want to pay any overtime. Between that and the way employees were being treated in general he decided it was time to move on. We will certainly be turning in our recycling can! And, voting against our current board member next time he is up for re-election.
The problem with government providing any service without private sector competition is they rarely suffer along with their constituents during tight times nor are they held to any kind of performance standard. This is also true of private company monopolies.
Raising the rates again….how much profit do they need?
Called this morning to have them pick up my recycling can.
This has gotten absolutely ridiculous.
What genius did that calculation and came up with 1.8 million? why not 1.8 billion? I guess they do not expect anyone to notice or give up their can? Expecting ECUA to actually do right by this county at this point is futile. They are not in it for the community they are in it for raises for the big dogs.
Our board member Kevin Stephens ran in 2020 on a platform not to raise rates. He has voted for every rate increase they have had.
They can have the recycle can back if they do. More trouble than it’s worth to this family. It used to be easy and now, nope. Tired of the do’s and don’ts and the frequently broken recycling facility.
@oversight im am so with u they can come pick that can up i will not pay for it..this is the problem these companies are getting away with raising prices and blaming it on inflation especially GROCERY STORES….it started with the gas prices and now look ITS just so ridiculous….Glad I have land to grow food and help my friends…the system sucks big time
It Friggin Figures !!!! I would be totally ashamed of myself if I was a Commissioner or Benson, you people ask for increase everytime I turn around it’s ridiculous……have you no shame drive around Pensacola look at all the trash laying out on the side of the road. That big truck with the arm hasn’t been seen in 6 mths around here WHY
You want and want did you idiots ever stop to think we the citizens of this place have other bills to pay besides be YOU…..I’m I can not keep paying , I don’t have the money, I can hardly feed myself. Give us a break we only make so much money THINK for once in your life how can these people keep doing it they are drowning in debt
Gas…..Food….FPL……Home Insurance…..Schools….Car Insurance
ECUA….. Pensacola gas co…….Cell Phones…..Medical…..Clothing
and YOU want yet another increase for horrible service….
This is outrageous. Awful service , poor costumer service and they have the guts to ask for rate increase. PRIVATIZE it. A business would run it more efficiently at a better cost , to Taxpayers. Huge bureaucracy . If most businesses were run like it, they would go bankrupt.
Really, most people that pays that $3 will dump anything they want to in it.
ECUA you can pick up all my cans if you raise my rate.i am in Molino and will burn all mine,including recycle
Board members should be required to ride with each type of service for at least 2 hours each!!! They have no clue on whats out there.
Recycle- 1-2 a month?
Yard debris 1-2 a month?
Bulk once a month? with a call in
How do we oppose this rate increase?
@Norah
There are two Senior Discounts for garbage pickup. Both provide smaller cans than the regular one. We have the Sr Disc and our two-person household has never had a problem with the bin being too small. Try it, you’ll save some $.
BTW – there are lots of senior discounts out there. Just ask, or try looking at the AARP website, or just Google “senior discounts”. You can find a lot of savings out there.
I believe they think that the recycle fee will eliminate the people that abuse the recycle cans by putting non-recyclable trash in them. People that really recycle and follow the rules will pay the $3 fee (I will).
I am on a fixed income. The ECUA again wants to raise the rates. It’s a shame we can’t elect people that spend time figuring out how to save money for their customers. It seems like the ECUA Chairman spends all his time on Blab TV trying to be a tv star. I’m eighty years old so I called ECUA about their Senior Discount. They said I did qualify and that they would come out and get my 90 gallon can and bring me a little 40 gallon can. This is what they call a Senior’s Discount. What a ripoff. That little can wouldn’t hold a old pair of my bloomers. Always heard people try to take advantage of you when you get old. It’s True. It took a real genius to come up with their Senior Discount. Told them to forget it.
ECUA is going to do what they
want.
They have never paid attention to the customers.
Beside, with all the new growth, and more revenue
why should they care about the customers who live
on a fix income ???????????
ECUA continues to raise the prices but yet doesn’t pay their employees anything and they wonder why they can’t keep anyone working there or find anyone new to hire. If any of you haven’t seen the sanitation department on Godwin Lane, I suggest you take a drive by because it’s disgusting. Water leaks everywhere every time it rains and the building has mold everywhere. Continue to raise the prices but won’t give them an acceptable workplace to keep everything up and running. Unacceptable. You can come pick up our recycling bin. All you want is more money and more money with no fixes to the problems taking place.
Completely eliminate recycling – you will never break even. This service will always be a financial liability.
Mainstream your organizational structure and practices to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.
By reducing your operational costs, you will no longer need to raise rates.
Of course, this will never happen because of incompetence and the good ole boy network.
The current mid and upper level management are clueless, they are not capable of managing the folks in the field, the yard waste and trash trucks are horribly inefficient they cross paths in the neighborhood and still miss pick ups regularly. Call and complain and you get the canned response “we will check on it” and nothing happens.
Well no more recycle for me.u help them recycle an they charge u for that.no way.throw it all together who cares
Have recycle cans transparent and maybe the driver can visually see if it has unauthorized items.
ECUA won’t make money on recycling anyway. The big florida government has no interest in the planet, water ways, wetlands,etc.. since they’re concerned with protecting polluters and the money they’re getting.
WHERE IS THE MEETING HELD??????????????????????????
Does ECUA now get paid for their bulk recycled material. How much income does that generate and how much will they lose if customers don’t recycle?
That’s great ECUA. Since you’ve not emptied my recycling can once in the last three weeks. When you DO decide to empty it, you can keep it.
Here in Santa rosa county we JUST had a rate increase of about $10.00 month. But you can bet the farm commissioners will approve it.
Someone needs a new F450 to drive home every night.
As long as we keep giving this mis-managed utility increases, they’ll never operate within a budget or become more efficient.
I can understand ECUA’s point of view regarding contaminated recycling containers, however, I disagree whole heartedly in raising the rates just to participate in the recycling program. The only thing they are going to achieve is mass customer rejection of recycling. Education and inspections are the key. Perhaps, inspectors could go ahead of the pickup routes and inspect the can’s contents and reject it with an explanation as to why it won’t be picked up in order to educate the offender. Getting compliance is key to success and anything short of this is dooming efforts to keep recyclables out of our landfills.
I sure wish their fees were based on their performance! Our neighborhood pick up is on Friday’s. At least 1/3 of the time, truck goes right past our sign/street and totally misses us. We all leave our cans out with hopes our garbage will get picked up on Saturday……nope. Then it’s a phone call on Monday for pickup…..now there’s a recycle….Friday comes and we start all over again!
$3 for a recycling can and $2 for an extra trash can?? Come take my recycling and bring me an extra garbage can….. when you do pick up my trash! At least 2-3 a quarter our cans are not emptied. We call ECUA and they say they will look into it and get someone out, yeah right, the next week!!!
come get my gray can in McDavid
You cannot pay$15-$16 an hour for employees at recycling facility,fast food pays that?Duh and they wonder why they cannot retain employees???Duh
Pass the recycling fee, ECUA come pickup your can ASAP!
Should the $3 recycling fee get approved, I will find it hard to believe it will generate an extra $1.8 million dollars in revenue for ECUA. Instead, I expect to see a large number of customers returning their recycling can to ECUA and just toss everything into the big green trash can.
IMHO, the proposed increase in water and sewer rates is excessive. But, I am sure the ECUA board will approve the higher rates as it seems every government agency loves to reach deeper into the pockets of rate payers.
This is completely ridiculous!!!!!! And poor service to boot, poor service equals rate increases?
Is the recycling center even functioning right now? It’s weird to raise rates and add fees for a sector of ECUA that’s non operational about half the time.