Water for many in Brown County will cost more in the new year as a string of local governments raise rates in response growing infrastructure needs.
The Green Bay City Council on Dec. 16 gave its unanimous blessing to raise stormwater and sewer rates effective at the start of the new year.
That same day, Allouez’s village staff announced they’d asked permission from the Wisconsin Public Service Commission to increase the cost of their residents’ water by 10%, fulfilling earlier expectations that prices in the village would go up. An analysis by Onward Accounting & Consulting to the Village Board showed De Pere, Suamico, and Pulaski also have water rate increases on the table, all coming after Bellevue’s first rate hike in a decade.
Allouez’s officials made comparisons to surrounding municipalities, talking about how to keep their own rates from growing so much and trying to find comfort in higher costs elsewhere. They pointed to Pulaski’s contract to buy its water from the Green Bay Water Utility, which the Green Bay City Council approved on Dec. 16.
Ginny Hinz, an accountant with Onward Accounting, told Allouez’s Village Board she was sure Pulaski’s water rate “is going to be the highest” of all the communities after switching its water supply to Green Bay’s.
Here’s what will happen to the landscape of Brown County water and the bills to come.
Green Bay’s stormwater, sewer rates to rise
Green Bay residents will see stormwater and sewage rates in 2026 go up 5.7% and 3.4%, respectively, a smaller increase than those last year.
For an average household’s quarterly water bill, that means:
The rate increases were directly associated with increased budget costs passed onto the customer.
In the case of stormwater rates, the city took the total budget allocated for stormwater services – $12.9 million for 2026 – and divided it by the number of runoff surface across the entire city, according to Valerie Joosten, the director of public works. This was also the practice under her predecessor Steve Grenier.
The chain of costs being passed on is longer for sewage services, which in the region is operated by NEW Water, the brand name of the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District. Sewage, which refers to wastewater, is not the same thing as “sewerage,” which refers to the entire system of pipes and treatment plants.
Nathan Qualls, executive director of the sewerage authority, presented a picture of sewer costs outpacing inflation across the nation to Ashwaubenon’s Village Board on Oct. 28, a situation that NEW Water was also wrapped up in.
The budget to keep NEW Water going in 2026 will be 7.5% more than 2025, or $57.6 million. Those costs were driven by physical improvements, like the $29 million dollar project to renew some of the sewer system’s largest pipes in downtown Green Bay.
Qualls said the sewerage authority had concluded in 2021 it would need to invest at least $310 million in physical infrastructure over the next two decades. Annual increases over 10 years to the rates of its customers – the towns, villages, and cities served – would “fund critical capital needs, operations, and maintenance,” according to Qualls’ presentation to Ashwaubenon.
That annual increase to rates was targeted for 5.5% to 7%. Such a target would only be possible in 2026 by the sewerage authority dipping into its reserve cash and giving itself a subsidy of about $3 million – the largest since 2023, according to Qualls’s presentation. Without subsidies into the future, Qualls showed annual rates would go up by double-digit percentage points over the next several years, peaking at almost 18% in 2029.
Because of the subsidy, rates will instead rise by 6.6% in 2026 for villages and cities like Green Bay, which have historically waited for NEW Water to finalize its budget in early December before calculating their own sewer rates for residents.
Bellevue water rates will jump for the first time in over a decade. Other municipalities are following
Money to keep water flowing has been one of the biggest preoccupations for local governments that’ve raised or are looking to raise rates for drinking water.
Bellevue, which has not raised its water rates in over a decade, was approved by the Public Service Commission in October for an almost 29% water rate increase, effective Jan. 1. For an average household, the village estimated the monthly cost for water will be $46.66. A public notice to its residents cited the need came from infrastructure investments and growing operating costs since its last rate case assessment in 2011.
“And when rates aren’t adjusted appropriately, eventually the math stops working,” wrote Bellevue Village Board member Tom Murphy on a Nov. 10 post to Substack. “The water utility isn’t allowed to run in the red forever. That’s why this adjustment is happening now.”
Allouez, similarly, has been tight on cash. It has little room to spend on unexpected emergencies to its water system, Hinz told the Village Board on Dec. 16, like the nearly dozen leaks in the village’s water system this year. It also has some large water expenses coming up, especially a $1.2 million water tower repainting planned for “roughly 2030,” according to Hinz.
The village, resultingly, has requested a 10% increase to its water rate, which would go into effect sometime in the summer, Hinz said. For an average household:
De Pere, Suamico, and Pulaski were also noted to have pending rate increases in 2026, according to Hinz’s analysis. In the case of Suamico, it’s to pay for a third well, second water tower, and new treatment facility. For Pulaski, it’s to install millions of dollars in infrastructure through Pittsfield to receive water from the Green Bay Water Utility. And for De Pere, it’s to avoid a negative cash balance through a new funding model, according to an October memo by the city’s public works director Scott Thoresen.
Competition over water rates remains top-of-mind
A side effect of rising costs has been for officials to look around, see how much their neighbors will pay in comparison, and seek comfort that they are not at the top of the water cost scale.
Allouez Village Board member Jim Genrich asked Hinz on Dec. 16 how there was such a disparity between water costs between localities just miles from each other.
De Pere will see the highest monthly water rates out of all local municipalities studied by Hinz. Residents in that city who use just over 3,000 gallons of water will pay the equivalent of $54.41 a month. That’s roughly double what Green Bay, Hobart, and Ashwaubenon residents pay by Hinz’s analysis, between $24 and $28 a month.
Hinz surmised that Ashwaubenon and Green Bay “have less infrastructure than you guys, so less fixed costs, so it makes sense their rates would be less,” to which Genrich replied, “And it seems like they’ll be catching up with us at some point and they have to redo or at least repair their system, which is mid-50s, I think.”
The disparity, according to data from Hinz’s analysis, can be correlated with where different Brown County communities source their water, with most getting their water from one of the area’s two major water authorities. There’s the Central Brown County Water Authority, which Allouez is a part of along with De Pere, Bellevue, Ledgeview, Lawrence, and Howard. The Green Bay Water Utility covers Green Bay, Ashwaubenon, Scott, Hobart, the Village of Wrightstown, and soon to be Pulaski.
Data provided by Hinz’s analysis showed the average Central Brown County Water Authority customer pays $41.76 a month for water, or just over $8 more than the $33.83 a month for residents living under the Green Bay Water Utility. Hinz noted some outliers with relatively high costs in Scott versus the rest of Green Bay Water Utility, which she attributed to rocky terrain that was unfriendly to water infrastructure.
After Allouez’s rate increase, the village would sit “probably about the middle, average for a monthly user” compared to its Brown County neighbors at $45.73, Hinz said.
The ranking could quickly change, said Allouez’s Village Board President Jim Rafter, which made Hinz point to Pulaski. A former colleague of hers was currently working on that village’s rate case assessment, and Hinz expected Pulaski to shoot to the top after joining the Green Bay Water Utility.
The contract was a point of pride two hours later at the Green Bay City Council, whose president, Brian Johnson, said he wanted to give the spotlight on “the significance of this achievement” to Brian Powell, general manager for Green Bay Water Utility.
The agreement will have Pulaski receiving water from the Green Bay Water Utility “hopefully by the end of summer 2026,” said Powell, generating about $300,000 a year for the city until 2046 when the Public Service Commission will set rates. Once Pulaski comes online, the water authority will sell about 4 ½ million gallons of water a day to outside jurisdictions, according to Powell.
“It’s a big win for us,” he said.
Johnson pointed to the expectation that more customers of Green Bay Water meant more stable water rates for Green Bay residents and Green Bay Water customers more broadly.
Mayor Eric Genrich asked Powell: “how much cheaper is our water in comparison to Central Brown County [Water Authority]?” to which Powell replied the city’s water utility provides the same wholesale rate of $2.98 per thousand gallons to all wholesale customers. He said he believed the Central Brown County Water Authority’s rate was “somewhere near $5 per thousand gallons.”
The Central Brown County Water Authority calculated its water purchase rate for 2026 at $4.26 per thousand gallons. Hinz had earlier that night told Allouez’s Village board that the wholesale rate for the Central Brown County Water Authority seemed to indicate “a major drop” in 2035 due to debts coming to the end of their life. She caveated, though, that there could be more infrastructure projects to come that could send that rate up.
Powell predicted more communities would become Green Bay Water customers, such as Pittsfield as the town grew beyond the capacity of private wells.
Council member Alyssa Proffitt asked Powell how much capacity Green Bay Water has to sell to other municipalities, to which he said there’s room for an additional 14 million gallons until the water utility hits its capacity.
“So shameless plug to surrounding municipalities,” Proffitt said, “Come get some of the best water from GB Water.”
(This story was updated because it contained an inaccuracy.)
Jesse Lin is a reporter covering the community of Green Bay and its surroundings, as well as politics in northeastern Wisconsin. He also writes a weekly column answering reader questions about Green Bay. Contact and send him questions at 920-834-4250 or jlin@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Water costs will rise in Brown County. Communities are trying not to be first place
Reporting by Jesse Lin, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
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