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element to our valve exercising program with a target of 20% of the lines per year for a five year <br />cycle for each line segment. <br />Conservation Oriented Rate Structure and Billing System. <br />Prior to the draught which was starting to be apparent in 2001, the City had not adjusted its water <br />rates since 1992. That was a politically traumatic experience both for our customers and for <br />some of our longer serving City Councilors. While we all recognized that our declining block <br />structure adopted on 1992 was not the most desirable system for valuing water, and was in fact <br />dysfunctional, the political will to take the first step took a while to build. The draught added <br />impetus to this effort. From a declining block structure of $0.90/1000 gallons for the first 20,000 <br />gallons, $0.70/1,000 gallons for 20,001 to 100,000 gallons, and $0.5511,000 gallons for all use in <br />excess of 100,000 gallons we started a three or four step (we ended up skipping the third step) to <br />first narrow the ranges and increase the rates, move to a flat rate structure, and then to an <br />inclining rate structure. The need to increase our rates to help pay for the new requirements for <br />arsenic removal in our water also helped to make these changes more palatable. The first step <br />was taken in 2004 when we maintained the same blocks but increased the rates to $1.00, $0.90, <br />and $0.75 respectively. In 2005 we again adjusted the rates and changed the block structure as <br />well to $1.05/1,000 gallons for the first 50,000 gallons and $0.90 for all water used over 50,000 <br />gallons. In March of 2007 we adopted our current rate and inclining block rate structure of <br />$1.10/1 .000 gallons for the first 8,000 gallons of use, $1.3 0/1,000 gallons for all use between <br />8,001 gallons and 50,000 gallons, and $1.5011,000 gallons for all use in excess of 50,000 gallons. <br />City of Alamosa I Water Conservation Plan I May 2007 1 Page 17 of 29 <br />