Columbia considers water rate hike of up to 150% over next 5 years for new intake, treatment plant
by Cassandra Stephenson, Tennessee Lookout
December 8, 2025
Columbia’s City Council is considering a bill that would raise water rates up to 20% per year for five years to pay for a new, more drought- and disaster-resistant intake from the Duck River and a water treatment plant.
The rate increase would affect Columbia Power and Water System’s 27,000 customers, and would impact customers of other nearby water systems that purchase water from Columbia Power and Water Systems. Columbia’s water utility currently sells water wholesale to systems in Maury County, Spring Hill, Mount Pleasant, which serve roughly 35,000 customers combined.
Columbia Power and Water Systems also requested the City Council increase its water impact fee, a fee paid by new water customers to help cover the costs associated with increased demand.
The rate and impact fee increases would allow Columbia’s water utility to secure federal and state low-interest, long term loans needed to finance the majority of the $520 million project. Those loans require substantial “stress tests” to ensure the utility will be able to pay back the funds in a timely manner, Columbia Power and Water Systems President and CEO Jonathan Hardin said, so anticipated growth in the utility’s customer base and increased income from higher new customer impact fees can’t be considered in the loan process.
What we see here today is the opposite: existing ratepayers being asked to subsidize decades of unplanned, uncoordinated, reactive growth … Now, what we’re facing is a plan that puts more straws into the Duck River, a river that’s already under stress.
– Gabe Howard, Maury County Commission
Several members of the public, including Maury County commissioners who spoke about the potential impact to their constituents, urged the council to pause and consider any other options that would place less burden on citizens, particularly those on fixed incomes.
Gabe Howard, who represents District 8 on the Maury County Commission, said he supports the higher impact fee proposal, but that the fee should have been raised years ago to better distribute the costs of system expansion among those that contributed to increased demand.
“We say often that growth should pay for growth, but the fact is, it doesn’t, and it never has,” Howard said. “What we see here today is the opposite: existing ratepayers being asked to subsidize decades of unplanned, uncoordinated, reactive growth … Now, what we’re facing is a plan that puts more straws into the Duck River, a river that’s already under stress.”
Howard said the compounded effect of an annual 20% rate increase would add up to 150% over five years — an “unprecedented … heavy burden” for Maury County’s families, farmers and small businesses.
“Yes, this increase on a percentage basis is high,” Hardin said, but the 20% per year rate increase represents a worst-case scenario.
“Every dollar we actually do collect (from impact fees and growth) will directly reduce rate needs, and we expect to see lower-percentage increases in years three, four and five,” he said.
Vice Mayor Randy McBroom said Columbia Power and Water System would have to come to the council every year with an independent study to set the annual rate increase.
The council reviewed the proposals during a study session on Thursday, ahead of the bills’ first consideration on Dec. 10. Public hearings for the bills would be scheduled for Jan. 8, 2026.
Should the project’s funding plan be approved in January, work would begin in Spring 2026 and complete around summer 2029.
Water woes
Columbia Power and Water System draws its water supply from the Duck River, a scenic river packed with ecological diversity that also serves as the main water source for the fast-growing southern Middle Tennessee region. But droughts and increasing demand for larger water withdrawals have put additional stress on the river.
Gov. Bill Lee issued an executive order in November 2024 creating an advisory group tasked with identifying ways to protect the river while addressing water needs. The group issued its first recommendations last month, including a feasibility study for a pipeline to the Tennessee River and raising the level of the reservoir created by the Normandy Dam to collect more water during the wet seasons.
Plans for the new intake site and treatment plant have been underway for a decade, Hardin said.
The Tennessee Valley Authority first issued a report citing the need for a downstream intake to meet the growing region’s water needs in 2001, Hardin said. The Duck River Agency echoed this finding in a 2011 report.
Columbia Power and Water System’s current intake withdraws up to 20 million gallons of water per day from the Duck River at the Riverside Drive intake. The proposed project would move the intake location downstream, and increase the utility’s withdrawal to up to 32 million gallons of water per day.
Hardin recounted the detrimental effects of severe droughts in 1988 and between 2007 and 2008. The Riverside Drive intake also relies on the Riverside Dam, a concrete structure erected in the 1920s that is “nearing the end of its useful life,” he said.
Extreme rain events like Hurricane Helene also put the dam at risk of failure, Hardin added. Relocating the intake downstream “to a location that would prove capable and resilient during a 1988 drought event, while protecting the sensitive Duck River ecology” would address those problems, he said.
Permits for the project have already been approved by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the project received a favorable biological opinion from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency in March. Columbia Power and Water Systems began acquiring the land easements necessary for the project soon after, and have since secured about 60%. The remaining easements should be secured by Jan. 1, Hardin said.
Jason Gilliam — chair of the Maury County Republican Party, a member of the Maury County Water System Board, and a leader of a group advocating for the construction of a new dam in Columbia — urged the council to consider postponing the decision while others consider alternate ways to source water. Gilliam cited a proposed expansion of an ongoing pipeline project from H.B. & T.S. Utility District in Williamson County.
Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder said his overarching question is the cost of inaction.
Should the rate increase not pass council approval, Hardin said the utility would serve the “modest amount of excess capacity” it maintains to developers who were first in line until it hits the 20 million gallon per day cap. After that, the utility would not be able to serve any additional water needs.
“For the interest of public health and safety, we would lock everything in place, and we would maintain the status quo,” Hardin said. The utility would “certainly revisit our wholesale obligations, and somebody like Spring Hill who has other options available to them would not receive the same priority as an entity that only gets the water directly (from Columbia Power and Water Systems).”
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