Retirement village residents facing 700 per cent water bill increase

RETIREMENT home residents are protesting against a massive taxpayer cash grab by SA Water which they say they will end up paying for.

RETIREMENT village residents fear a 700 per cent water bill increase is hanging over their heads because the State Government has not brought an SA Water cash grab under control.

SA Water, which already makes hundreds of millions of dollars in profit each year, wants to take advantage of a system in which the Valuer-General is valuing each retirement dwelling in a village as a separate entity.

This means that despite only one water meter going to each village, dozens of dwellings could be charged by SA Water as separate entities.

The system, which would cost retirees millions each year, was put on hold in 2015 following alarm about the first two retirement homes recording a 700 per cent increase, netting SA Water another $24,000 in revenue.

Retirement village residents fear a 700 per cent water bill increase is hanging over their heads because the State Government has not brought an SA Water cash grab under control. Picture: Thinkstock

But Retirement Villages Residents Association president Bob Ainsworth said the problem had not been resolved almost three years later, and the deal to stop SA Water acting through compensation was due to expire in 2025.

“This problem goes back to 2015 when the State Valuation Office made a decision to issue separate assessments to each retirement dwelling, rather than retain single assessments which are issued to all other multiple occupancy complexes such as shopping centres, office developments and blocks of flats,’’ Mr Ainsworth said.

“SA Water opportunistically wants to charge 8500 dwellings for a metered service despite there being only one meter to the complex they were in, and also to change the way the sewer charge was calculated to make even more money.’’

But an SA Water spokesman defended the system of compensation from the State Government, because it avoided payment by those living in retirement villages.

When the first bills hit following an SA Water decision to use the new Valuer-General system, residents of the first victim, the Lutheran Village at Para Vista, faced their water supply charge increasing from $566 to $7353, and the sewer charge bill went up from $1557 to $9163.

Residents were confronted with a total bill that overnight moved from $2123 to $16,516, an annual increase of 680 per cent with no change to the service.

The agreement to “compensate” SA Water came from an expert working group but because SA Water has put a hold on the split system it has only amounted to $24,000 “compensation”.

“The group elected to provide the Para Vista Village and all other villages that would change from a single assessment to multiple individual assessments, with a discount on their bills,’’ the SA Water spokesman said.

The spokesman confirmed retirement villages would face the new charges in 2025.