Editor’s note: This is the second in a four-part series examining the 15th anniversary of Isle of Wight County signing its 2009 Norfolk Water Deal and its impacts. The first was published Sept. 24. The third will focus on environmental issues driving continued participation in the deal.

 

Isle of Wight County has raised its water rate 46% since 2015, from $8.84 per 1,000 gallons that year to the current $12.96, which took effect July 1. It’s the third-highest water rate, after Suffolk and Southampton County, in the South Hampton Roads region.

Seven of the past nine Isle of Wight County budgets have included water rate hikes ranging from 5% to 9.5%.

Isle of Wight’s increases have outpaced its two towns.

The town of Smithfield has raised its water rate only 23% over the same nine-year window, from $5.68 per 1,000 gallons in 2015 to $7 as of July 1.

The town of Windsor has raised its rate 21% since 2015, from $7 per 1,000 gallons that year to $8.50 as of July 1.

Both towns rely solely on groundwater pumped from municipal wells, and aren’t obligated to buy water from Norfolk via the Western Tidewater Water Authority.

Suffolk, which is a party to the Norfolk Water Deal, has raised its own rate 25% over the same nine-year window from $11.84 per 1,000 gallons in 2015 to $14.83 as of July 1 of this year.

Suffolk, like Isle of Wight, has hiked its price seven times over the past nine years. The city has the highest rate among all Hampton Roads localities south of the James River, according to a Smithfield Times analysis of 11 South Hampton Roads city, county and town budgets for the current fiscal year, after accounting for differences in how the water is priced.

The cities of Suffolk, Chesapeake, Norfolk and Portsmouth all list their rates per 100 cubic feet, which equates to 748 gallons rather than 1,000. Current rates per 1,000 gallons, from highest to lowest, are as follows:

• Suffolk: $14.83
• Southampton: $14 (for more than 4,000 gallons per month)
• Isle of Wight: $12.96
• Windsor: $8.50
• Norfolk: $8.40
• Portsmouth: $7.27
• Smithfield: $7
• Chesapeake: $5.84
• Virginia Beach: $5.74
• Surry: $4.40 (for over 3,000 gallons per month)
• Franklin: $3.20

Isle of Wight had the second-highest water rate after Suffolk until July 1, when Southampton – which also isn’t a party to the Norfolk Water Deal – hiked its rate from $9 per 1,000 gallons to $14.

Southampton County Administrator Brian Thrower said Southampton’s Board of Supervisors voted for the $5 rate hike to take pressure off the county’s general fund, which like Isle of Wight makes an annual payment to subsidize its water and sewer fund, since both counties’ water and sewer funds operate with expenses exceeding revenue from water sales each year.

The $12.5 million budget for Isle of Wight’s water fund includes a $4.5 million transfer from the general fund this fiscal year.

 

Is Norfolk to blame?

The ever-increasing cost of paying its share of the 2009-signed Norfolk Water Deal isn’t what’s driving Isle of Wight’s rates upward – at least, not entirely – according to County Administrator Randy Keaton.

“The largest single expense in the utility budget is for debt payments,” Keaton said, which account for $2.6 million or 20.8% of the $12.5 million in budgeted utility fund expenses listed in the county’s 2024-25 budget.

A contract with Suffolk, which supplies some of its own water to Isle of Wight separate from the gallons purchased from Norfolk, is budgeted at $1.9 million. Isle of Wight’s Norfolk Water Deal payment, at just under $1.4 million, accounts for 10.4%, Keaton said.

Chris Pomeroy, the WTWA attorney who negotiated the Norfolk Water Deal in 2009 on behalf of Isle of Wight and Suffolk, shared with county supervisors a chart showing the WTWA has multiple contracts allowing it to withdraw a collective 16.7 million gallons per day in 2024, of which 14.2 million are usable. Roughly 1.5 million gallons per day are lost due to the purification process used at Suffolk’s water treatment plant.

Just under half of the 16.7 million gallons per day come from the Norfolk Water Deal. The next largest source, at 6.6 million gallons per day or 39.5%, comes from the WTWA’s 2017-issued state groundwater withdrawal permit.

The WTWA buys an additional 1.2 million gallons per day from Suffolk-owned wells and reservoirs, and 2.5 million gallons per day from Portsmouth.

Suffolk’s 2024-25 budget listed a 6% increase in Portsmouth’s water rate as one of the factors driving the 4.3% water rate increase Suffolk began passing along to its water customers July 1. Isle of Wight’s 2024-25 budget listed a 5% increase in its cost to buy water through the WTWA as the reason for passing along the latest increase to end users.

Federal Environmental Protection Agency regulations regarding lead pipes, according to Pomeroy, also have had an impact on the region’s water rates.

“The EPA requirements are becoming more numerous and difficult over time,” Pomeroy told county supervisors in March. “Lead pipe surveying, inventorying and continued replacement in the distribution systems, that drives water utility costs. That’s a big effort underway right now. Every community has to have inventories completed by the fall of this year.”

 

What the county rate buys varies

The difference in rates between Isle of Wight County and its two towns have resulted not only in some county residents paying more than others, but also in what they receive for their money.

Any household outside Smithfield’s or Windsor’s borders that doesn’t have its own private well pays the county rate, though not all are physically able to access the water the county buys from Norfolk.

According to Isle of Wight County’s economic development website, insidetheisle.com, the county owns and operates 19 separate water systems and 31 sewer stations providing services to just under 4,000 customers, not all of whom are located in the county’s northern-end Newport Development Service District that’s supplied by the WTWA.

More than 500 households in Isle of Wight’s Gatling Pointe neighborhood, located just outside Smithfield, pay the county rate despite their water being supplied by the town.

Isle of Wight, under an agreement with Smithfield each governing body reauthorized last year, buys and resells over 100,000 gallons of town water per day to Gatling Pointe residents.

The Days Point, Thomas Park and Tormentors Creek neighborhoods surrounding Hardy Elementary School also pay the county rate. Each presently receives its water from three separate county-owned wells.

All three wells are or recently were approaching the federal 4 milligram-per-liter limit for fluoride.

Days Point, as of the county’s 2022 testing, saw fluoride levels at 3.8 milligrams per liter, while Thomas Park and Tormentors Creek tested at 3.04 and 3.35 milligrams per liter, respectively, in 2021. 

Water containing more than 2 milligrams per liter, according to a public notice the county sends with its water quality reports, can lead to a brown staining or pitting of teeth known as dental fluorosis.

During the last week of January, a failure in the Days Point well screen, which would ordinarily keep rock fragments from entering the water supply, necessitated drilling a new well. This resulted in the area remaining under a boil water notice for a month while the county waited for the replacement well to pass Virginia Department of Health tests. 

The county has plans in the works to transition the three Hardy neighborhoods to a water main that pumps town water to the new school, but the switch hasn’t happened yet. According to Assistant County Administrator Don Robertson, the cost of doing so, as of late July, was estimated at over $10 million.