Baltimore residents will likely see a double-digit increase to their sewer rate and substantial increases to other city utility costs in the coming years under a rate schedule outlined by Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration Wednesday.

The rates, which were included on an agenda for the city’s spending board, call for an immediate 15% increase to the sewer rate. At the same time, water rates would increase by 3%. Those increases will be in place until the budget year ends June 30.

And residents could face even more increases. Scott’s proposed plan calls for water and sewer rates to increase by 9% in the next two budget years, while stormwater would increase by 3% both years.

The increases must still be approved by the Board of Estimates, which is effectively controlled by the mayor. For many residents, sewer bills will increase a few dollars a month the first year but higher-volume residential customers could pay an additional $20 or more monthly

The announcement, the most substantial hike proposed in a decade, comes about a week after Scott was sworn in for a second term in office. The Democrat campaigned on continuing the city’s holistic approach to the crime fight and rehabilitating vacant properties. Utility rates did not figure heavily into the the race.

The proposed increases would supersede a rate schedule approved in 2022 that was supposed to carry through the end of this budget year. That year the Scott administration called for more modest increases of 3% for water and stormwater and 3.5% for sewer. Officials touted the schedule as the lowest increases city residents had experienced since 1998.

From 2016 to 2021, residents were slapped with 9% annual increases to water, sewer and eventually stormwater. Officials argued the fees were needed to pay for an upgrade to digital water meters. Residents have not faced a single-year increase as high as what’s been proposed since 2013, city records show.

Aaron Moore, the department’s chief financial officer, pledged during a May 2022 meeting of the Board of Estimates to not let rates move backward.

“We will not be returning to the high increases of the past,” he said at the time.

According to the spending board agenda, the increases have been necessitated by inflation and a drop in the bond rating for the city’s sewer bonds. The rating was downgraded with a negative outlook in 2023. That same year, the rating for the city’s water bonds was also downgraded.

Baltimore’s water and wastewater services are, by law, self-sustaining operations that operate outside the city’s general fund. City financial reports show the cushion between wastewater revenue and the money owed toward the fund’s debt has narrowed significantly in recent years as debt and expenses grew.

Baltimore manages a water system thats serves about 1.8 million people. The system has 200,000 meters in the city and another 200,000 in Baltimore County.

Since 2002, Baltimore has been under a consent decree from the federal government mandating the city make improvements to stop overflows from its sanitary sewer system. Increased costs are billed to Baltimore County which sets its own rate for county customers.

In 2023, the city entered into another consent decree for operations at its Back River and Patapsco wastewater treatment plants. Signed after a 2022 state takeover of Back River, the agreement calls for the plants to replace and repair necessary equipment, submit quarterly progress reports and hold annual public meetings on their progress.

The city must also install signs and warning lights at the plants’ outfalls in the Patapsco and Back rivers, which will turn on if sewage discharges bypass some or all of the plants’ treatment processes.