Ark Valley News - Increase in Wichita water rates will affect Kechi residents

Increase in Wichita water rates will affect Kechi residents
By Taylor Messick
Last Updated: January 19, 2017

Wichita is poised to increase its water and sewer rates over each of the next five years. This will proportionately affect Kechi residents unless a new provider can be found in the future, which doesn't seem likely.

Prices went up 10 percent last year and will go up another 4 percent this year. This year's increase comes out to 13 cents per thousand for both water and sewer to wholesale customers like the city of Kechi. Kechi has an ordinance that will automatically increase rates by the same amount on customers. This will mean an increase of about 65 cents per month for the average home.

Council member Brian Adams urged city staff to seek other options, but there hasn't been any success yet. City Administrator Bob Conger has reached out to other providers with no luck.

"We've reached out to officials from El Dorado," said Conger. "They're exploring the possibility of a water line somewhere into the Wichita area, presumably on 254. We've heard no follow-up on that so at this point we have to treat it for what it is. We also reached out to the Chisholm Creek Water Authority; they were not interested in taking on new customers at this time."

Conger said the city's only other option would be to hire a contractor. This could be done if the city was interested in seeking out possible available well sites. If reasonable rates were found the city could potentially put in its own well.