By In&Out Staff Writers

At a recent community meeting, Arizona American Water President Paul Townsley presented his defense of the proposed 100 percent water rate hike. The meeting was about two hours long but the distilled version illuminates these key points made by Townsley: “It’s not our fault,” and “We have to make more money.”

To help alleviate the pain of repeated astronomical rate hikes, Townsley suggested considering a new rate structure using “rate consolidation.” Simply stated, this would take the cost of Anthem’s water—including the infrastructure, maintenance, delivery and the water itself—combine it with the cost of other AAW districts and divide the total equally among the districts. This, Townsley said, would be good for Anthem. It would probably be good for Townsley, too, as consolidation would streamline operations internally. io