What is the Florida Water & Wastewater Rates Dashboard?
This interactive rates and financial benchmarking dashboard is designed to assist utility managers, finance directors, Board members, local officials, reporters, and customers in comparing their utility's residential water and wastewater rates against multiple characteristics, including utility finances, system size, customer base demographics, and geography.
Current rates data for this dashboard are drawn from the 2018 Drinking Water and Wastewater Residential Rate Survey conducted by Raftelis, in conjunction with the University of Florida.
The Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill provided a free 40-minute interactive webinar to introduce Florida's new online 2018 Water Rates Dashboard. The Florida Water Rates Dashboard was designed for utility managers and decision-makers to evaluate their rates, assess the financial health of their water system, measure affordability, and determine the strength of their conservation pricing signal.
Rates data: The rates for the Florida Dashboard were collected from utilities by the University of Florida, in conjunction with Raftelis. Each utility's rates are standardized to monthly billing and thousands of gallons for the purposes of fair comparison on the Dashboard.
Demographic data: The American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2012-2016) from the US Census Bureau
System characteristics, such as number of connections and water source type: Environmental Protection Agency's Safe Drinking Water Information System
Geographic: United States Geological Survey
If your utility is not included on your state’s dashboard, it may be that a rate sheet was not received during the survey collection period, or clarifying questions went unanswered.
By utilizing the “Edit Data or Add Utility” button on the upper right corner of the Dashboard, you can temporarily compare your water and wastewater rates against other utilities. Please note that data are only available locally and will not be saved within the Dashboard.
If you were not contacted for rates by the EFC, please reach out to Annalee Harkins with your utility’s name and contact information for future surveys.
Please contact Annalee Harkins. We will do our best to update your rates as soon as possible!
Data can be edited temporarily by utilizing the “Edit Data or Add Utility” button located in the upper right corner of the Dashboard. Please note that data are only available locally and will not be saved within the Dashboard.
Dials such as “Cost Recovery” and “Affordability” rely on supplemental data in making calculations. When supplemental data is not available for a utility, the message is displayed and the dial is blanked out.
Each dial has a “?” button which shows how the dial is calculated, the data used in the calculation, and a brief explanation of the dial’s purpose.
For additional information, please contact Robin Chacko at Raftelis.
If you have other data needs, please send a request to Annalee Harkins.
Rates Dashboards are primarily funded through contracts with state and Federal governments. If you are interested in a Rates Dashboard for your state, please contact Glenn Barnes.
Dashboards with annual contracts such as NC and GA are updated approximately the same time each year. Other states are updated on a per-contract basis.
Utilities may send corrections if their rates are incorrectly displayed on the dashboard. These corrections are implemented on a quarterly basis.
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