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GREENSBORO — You use it every day. To cook your spaghetti. To wash your socks. To feed your plants.

It costs the average customer only about $35 a month, but nearly every year, Greensboro water users face increased fees to cover the extensive costs of bringing liquid to their faucets.

This year — as the recession continues and everyone is watching our pennies — it may be even tougher for city leaders to strike the balance between controlling costs and running a top-notch water system.

It’s especially hard when new bills keep coming due.

“All we’re doing is try to take care of the citizens’ utility system. If the policy is 'Don’t take care of it. Let us fall back to where it was 10 to 15 years ago,’ that’s what we’ll do,” Greensboro water resources director Allan Williams said.

The average Greensboro water customer uses 4,500 hundred gallons a month — and spends more than $400 a year on water payments.

And it’s not the H²0 that drives the costs up. It’s miles of pumps, pipes and purification processes the water must travel through before — and after — it gets to your house.

For something that falls out of the sky, the business of water can be pricey.

Sewer upgrades in Latham Park cost a cool $55 million. Replacing the crumbling Townsend Dam will go for $40 million.

The city’s new incinerator will cost $25 million.

Those and other projects translate to higher payments for water users.

Since 2004, water rates have increased between 15 and 8 percent every year except this one.

Last spring, city staff members proposed a 6 percent rate hike to go into effect on Jan. 1.

But council members decided to dip into the water department’s reserve accounts for the year to hold off on raising rates again.

At the time, Williams warned the council that if it held off on the rate increase, the next increase could be in the range of 10 to 15 percent.

Since then, a new city manager was hired and a new, more fiscally conservative City Council was elected.

The elected officials, who have to set price increases, have already indicated they are going to keep an eye on fees.

“We’ve been having gigantic increases every year. We are trying to be more business-friendly. If you are in the hotel-motel industry and you increase the water rates, can you imagine?” said Councilwoman Trudy Wade, who spearheaded last year’s rate decision.

From the utility’s end, staff members have been working to keep costs down. That means putting off any and all work that isn’t mandated by law, Williams said.

“What we can, we defer,” Williams said. “We’ve done just about all we can.”

And for those things that can’t wait, staff members are trying creative ways to cut costs.

Two years ago, city staff members started a pilot project to test a new method for taking the nutrients out of the waste stream to meet new state standards to clean up Jordan Lake, a water supply lake within Greensboro’s watershed.

Existing technologies would force the city to add a lot of new pumps and tanks to the current system at the T.Z. Osborne Wastewater Treatment Plant — to the tune of an estimated $75 million.

Instead, city staff members tried a different solution.

They added small plastic wheels, about an inch in diameter with spokes and ridges, into existing tanks. This simple technology allows the city’s current treatment system to remove the nitrogen and phosphorus and doesn’t require as much new equipment.

It’s a solution that will save the city money.

“It’s pretty amazing what the technology will allow,” said Donald Howard, Greensboro’s water reclamation manager. “We can treat a whole lot more flow through the same size tank without the up-front capital costs.”

City staff now estimates it will cost about $4 million to design and another $50 million to build the Jordan Lake solution.

Williams declined to predict what the city staff members will recommend in terms of a rate increases this year.

But next year’s budget will include the first $2 million in design costs for the new system — further adding to the pressure on rates.

Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com