Burnaby's utility rates are increasing by six per cent next year due to infrastructure costs passed on by Metro Vancouver, according to the city.
The rate increase comes to about $53 more per single-family household in the city, according to reports from the city's finance and civic development committee presented at the Nov. 28 council meeting.
The money is going towards infrastructure throughout the region from the Seymour-Capilano filtration plant to new pipes needed as part of the Port Mann Bridge twinning project, according to Mayor Derek Corrigan.
"There's hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of ongoing expenditures in the region in infrastructure," he said, adding all the cities have to invest in it to make the system work.
Those costs account for about half of the charges passed on to the homeowner, Corrigan added.
"Many of the decisions about what we have to do come from the provincial and federal government. They say, 'You must have water at this rate,' and we have to meet those standards," he said. "Often they don't put much money in, but (we) have to carry the responsibility."
Maintaining infrastruc-ture is costly but necessary, Corrigan pointed out.
"It's not so much, for instance, how much it costs for a litre of water coming into your house," he said, "it's the infrastructure to get it there that costs such big money."
The increase is down compared with the past four years.
In 2008, Burnaby's waterworks utility rate increased by 11 per cent, in 2009 it was 12 per cent, in 2010 it was 14 per cent and last year it was 11 per cent, according to the committee's report.
The city's Metro Vancouver costs have risen by 106.6 per cent since 2005, primarily because of major infrastructure replacement, the report added.
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