Residents will see about a $1 increase in their monthly water bills after the Denver Board of Water Commissioners adopted rate changes to pay for upgrades and projects to keep Denver Water's system operating efficiently.

The new rates will take effect Jan. 1.

“We continue to move forward on a series of major, multiyear projects to ensure we're delivering safe, reliable water to our customers,” Denver Water CEO/Manager Jim Lochhead said in a news release. “Our rates will fund important projects like building a new state-of-the-art water treatment plant and laboratory, expanding a key reservoir and the ongoing replacement of aging water pipes. While costs to maintain and upgrade this system continue to rise, we have worked to keep rate increases as small as possible.”

All residential customers will see a slight increase on both the fixed monthly charge and the price per gallon. Inside Denver, a customer using 103,000 gallons as they did in 2019 would see an overall rise in the monthly bill of about $1, according to the release.

Customers outside the city using that volume would see a monthly increase between $1.15 and $1.36 per month.

Denver Water's five-year, $1.4 billion capital plan includes about 140 major projects that are focused on maintaining or upgrading infrastructure and ensuring the utility has the flexibility needed to ensure a reliable water supply as weather patterns in the future veer from the past and the population grows, the release said.

According to the release, among the most important projects receiving money from water rates are: a new, state-of-the-art water treatment plant; installing a new 8.5-mile water pipeline to replace a pipeline that was built in the 1930s; expanding Gross Reservoir to provide a more reliable future water supply; constructing a new water quality lab to ensure Denver Water is meeting the highest quality standards; and investing more than $148 million to repair and replace water pipes.