This is according to an annual survey done by the city of Piqua that shows the amount you pay for water can vary by hundreds of dollars from one area municipality to the next.
Even communities just a few miles apart can see big differences. In Clark County, the average water bill in New Carlisle ($235.35) is more than 2.5-times larger than the average in Enon ($84).
And for most area residents, water rates are going up.
Montgomery County Environmental Services, the largest provider in the region, announced it will raise both water and sewer rates by 5% annually for its roughly 230,000 customers until 2030.
Next year. water rates are going up 8% in Dayton, 12% in Springfield and 4% in Hamilton. In Oakwood, the minimum monthly water rate will rise by just over 22%.
This comes on top of increases this year. The Piqua survey found southwest Ohio communities saw a 3.5% increase in water rates this year. This followed a 4.5% average increase last year, the highest since 2018.
The survey by the Piqua Utilities Department looked at water rates in 70 communities in southwest Ohio, not including townships.
Rates are based on 22,500 gallons (or 3,000 cubic feet of water) in a three-month period as of March 1, 2025.
Reasons for differences
“Numerous factors contribute to discrepancies between rates in communities in the Miami Valley region,“ said Piqua Utilities Director Kevin Krejny.
He said some local communities rely on surface water, which is more expensive to treat than groundwater. Some plants have to treat for phosphorous, which adds costs. And some use water revenues to supplement their general funds.
“Municipalities with new treatment facilities and large infrastructure upgrades tend to have higher costs and rates, due to debt repayment,” he said.
Many rate increases in southwest Ohio are going towards paying for infrastructure projects, as the pipes and pumps that make up municipal water systems are aging.
“If you go around the horn, (communities) are all doing infrastructure upgrades. It’s a continual process, one that it never stops, but that’s what the utility business is,” said Greene County Sanitary Engineering Director Mark Chandler.
Water and sewer costs are often billed together, but the prices in this article are for water costs only, not combined water and sewer. In a handful of cases (Greene County and Yellow Springs) water increases were combined with decreases in sewer rates.
But even with the decrease, the average total water and sewer bill in Yellow Springs is $710.19, which is hundreds of dollars more than most local communities.
Tale of two villages
Yellow Springs village officials did not respond to numerous requests for comment about why their water rates are so high.
The village in 2018 completed a new $7.2 million water treatment plant meant among other things to reduce the occurrence of brown water coming out of taps.
The village council in 2023 voted for a rapidly increasing rate schedule after hiring a consultant that “concluded that the Village’s existing water rates do not properly reflect the Village’s cost of providing this service,” according to an ordinance passed in February 2023.
Yellow Springs has had the most expensive water in the region since 2017. The 2022 Piqua water study put the average quarterly water bill before the 2023 increase at $585.
The ordinance says prices will increase again in January 2026 and January 2027.
Minster Village Administrator Don Harrod said they keep their costs down by having a combined water and sewer department -- saving on personnel costs — and they built a new plant 12 years ago without much financing.
Other than that, Harrod said they just focus on keeping costs down for the village’s roughly 3,000 residents and a Dannon Yogurt Plant.
Hamilton, Middletown, Springfield
Middletown residents will have to start paying their water bills again in January, after getting a break since August because a cybersecurity attack brought down their water billing system. The city has announced no plans to increase the base rate for water, but initial bills will be higher because they will include back-payments from the outage.
“While the first bill may be sizeable due to not billing in recent months, the city is currently working on a plan for a grace period and/or payment plan that will allow residents to catch up on payments over a period of several months,” the city said in a release.
Hamilton water and sewer rates are in year four of a five-year rate plan that took effect in 2023. For 2026 and 2027, water rates are to increase by 4% and wastewater by 9%.
For Springfield residents, water rates will increase 12%, sewer will increase 1% and stormwater will see a 25 cent-increase in January. These rate increases were approved in 2024 and started Jan. 1, 2025. At the time, city Finance Director Katie Eviston said the city had seen water treatment costs increase more than $1 million annually since 2021.
Montgomery County
Montgomery County will raise both water and sewer rates by 5% annually for its roughly 230,000 customers until 2030.
Commissioners cite a few reasons: The city of Dayton, from which Montgomery County gets its water, is raising their own prices. Additionally, the rate increase is expected to fund $248 million in infrastructure improvements over the next five years, Montgomery County Administrator Michael Colbert previously told the Dayton Daily News.
“We have one of the largest utilities in the area, and we’re looking at over 2,600 miles of combined sewer and water pipe. We purchase and we have about 28 million gallons of water,” Colbert said. “So when you look at a system of this size — to maintain it, and keep it up — you had to have some dollars, and we haven’t had an increase since 2022."
About 80% of the county’s pipes were installed at least three decades ago, Montgomery County officials previously said, and a significant share of underground infrastructure is between 80 to 105 years old.
Montgomery County ratepayers are charged $171.66 over a three month period, Piqua’s data shows, putting them slightly above average for the region, which is $163.22. Dayton is slightly below that average at $145.18.
Greene County
Greene County last month approved a 3.5% “inflationary” water rate hike, though its sewer rate will not change. Starting in 2023, Greene County implemented a plan to gradually increase its water rates by 7% over a period of years. Piqua’s water rate data shows Greene County water customers experienced a 2.8% increase this year.
Greene County recently completed the first phase of its own multi-million-dollar infrastructure improvements, an initiative titled Greene Forward, with the only outstanding project being portions of the Hilltop Wellfield, said Chandler.
That project was funded almost entirely by debt service, Chandler said, with the current rate increases only accounting for operational and material cost increases.
“It’s electricity, it’s labor, it’s chemicals, and it’s our capital infrastructure. That’s it in a nutshell,” he said.
Greene County’s infrastructure improvements included the $40 million Northwest Regional water treatment plant, completed in July, as well as an $11 million investment in the Hilltop Wellfield, located on 57 acres in Beavercreek Twp. That wellfield is expected to provide between 3 million and 5 million gallons of water per day for current and planned development in that area.
Greene Forward was funded almost entirely through the state, Chandler said. The county has about 27,000 sewer customers, with about 21,000 of those also as water customers, he said.
Biggest increase
Credit: Jen Balduf
Credit: Jen Balduf
Oakwood residents saw a nearly 50% spike in water rates last year, with more to come. Earlier this month, the council approved an additional 22% rate hike to go into effect next year.
This is the third consecutive year for water rate increases in Oakwood, and the second year for sewer rate hikes for “operational and anticipated capital needs,” City Manager Katie Smiddy previously told the Dayton Daily News, including a $2.1 million water and sewer reconstruction project,
Usage above the minimum increases by the same percentage, from $3.30 to $4.13 for each 100 cubic feet (748 gallons of water).
The typical Oakwood household uses between 300 and 900 cubic feet of water each month. Based on that usage, residential water bills would increase by about $7 to $12 each month.
Ohio water still cheap
There were 23 cities whose rates stayed the same year-over-year, including those served by Montgomery County (Riverside, Centerville, and Kettering) and Butler County (Fairfield, West Chester). Other cities staying the same include Bellbrook, Springboro, and Trotwood.
Only five communities had water rates that went down, including Troy and Tipp City.
Water rates remain on the low end compared to the rest of the United States, according to the World Population Review.
In 2024, Ohio has an average monthly water bill of $28 (a $1 increase from 2023 data). Neighboring West Virginia has the highest average monthly water bill at a whopping $105, followed by Oregon at $88, and the two cheapest states for water are North Carolina ($20) and Wisconsin ($21).
Ohio is the 19th cheapest states to live, according to the World Population Review’s cost of living index, a middle-of-the-road position it has held for the last few years.
Reporters Jen Balduf, Cornelius Frolik, Jessica Orozco, Michael Pitman and Bryn Dippold contributed to this report.
