Du Quoin at 95.7% water efficiency

They have taken a verbal beating at city hall since the January water bills came out.

By the way, the January bills are largely based on December usage as the city council promised, not February bills based on January usage.

We didn't have to contact the Math Academy in Aurora to determine on our own that the new rates ARE 18 percent higher, not the 36 percent that some believe. That number comes from people adding an 18 percent increase on the water side and the same amount carried over to the sewer side of the bill.

Here is a simple example: Say, the water side of your bill is $100 and it went up 18 percent. That makes your bill $118 (on the water side). You add to that the same $118 on the sewer side. That makes your whole bill $238, God forbid. When you do the math, the $38 increase is still only 18 percent of the whole bill, not 36 percent.

Mayor Rex Duncan, who is taking the heat for the increase, did the math at his home when his city water bill hit the mail.

His bill went from $56.00 to $83.00, a $27.00 increase. Wow, that's a 46% increase! But, when he looked at the devil in the detail he found that he had used 1,300 gallons more this month than last, a 28 percent usage increase by itself. When he subtracted the 28 percent from the 46 percent he's back to the same 18 percent increase.

Furthermore, because of the various December holidays, there were three extra days in the billing cycle.

It's still a substantial increase.

But, here's the good news.

Part of the reason for requiring the large one-time increase is the huge investment the city made over a two-year period (2012-2013) in the city's 1920 vintage water system, fraught with rusting and cracked water lines and large open leaks, oft-times too many and too large to keep after.

The city has invested, all told, nearly $2 million to rebuild the integrity of that system. Some of the construction was through grants and the local cash matches to those grants. All told, the costs snuck up on the city.

But, here are the numbers you need to know. During several months in 2011 and 2012 the city was losing 34 percent of the water it was buying from Rend Lake because of holes (leaks) in the system. That's a huge loss and, essentially, Du Quoin was buying millions of gallons of water that were going "down the drain" before it even got to our homes and businesses.

The December 2014 numbers show a new, different picture.

In December, the City of Du Quoin bought 18,814,003 gallons of water from Rend Lake. The city billed customers for 18,022,432 gallons of water. Some water used by the fire department, sewer plant, etc. probably can't be tracked. If you do the math that equates to a 95.7 percent efficiency in the system.

It mirrors the hard work of contractors who built new lines down East Main and South Washington Streets and of water superintendent Chris Lacy to find breaches in the nearly 90-year-old system and repair or replace lines.

If the city is buying less water, it is saving money and, in time, the city's water department budget should find parity again.