CUC generates $12M in water, wastewater revenues

The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. recorded $12.054 million in water and wastewater revenues in the first nine months of the fiscal year, ending June 30. This is $4 million shy of the projected total revenue of $16.1 million for the entire fiscal year.

CUC chief financial officer Charles Warren described current revenue figures as “pretty close” to projections.

This actual operating revenue is from Oct. 1, 2010, through June 30, 2011. Total revenue is expected to change when fiscal year 2011 ends on Sept. 30.

For the water division, CUC registered $9.238 million in revenue, a bulk of which came from residential customers, amounting to $4.525 million. The rest are from commercial customers ($1.864 million) and payment from the government ($2.848 million).

CUC had projected to earn $12.318 million in fiscal year 2011, with residential customers expected to pay $6 million; commercial customers, $2.486 million; and the government, $3.798 million.

Warren believes that CUC’s water metering program is one of the reasons for the variance. “I believe the revenue shortfall can be directly attributed to the very active water metering program. Once customers are metered and billed for actual consumption, they have a real incentive to conserve,” Warren told Saipan Tribune yesterday.

“We apparently under-estimated the amount customers would conserve once they were made aware of their actual consumption. This conservation is a good thing, considering our very limited water resources and the high cost of pumping and delivering the water,” he added.

For the wastewater division, the utilities corporation posted an actual revenue of $2.815 million from October 2010 through June 2011, broken down into: $674,240 from residential customers; $1.296 million from commercial customers; and $845,021 from the government. CUC had projected wastewater revenue for the 12-month period to reach $3.754 million.

According to Warren, this shortfall is due to the consumption that were not previously billed by CUC. “On the wastewater side, we have been very busy identifying and billing customers who are connected the wastewater system but were previously not billed.”

Based on CUC records, the utilities firm has budgeted operating revenues of $18.428 million for fiscal year 2011. These include $14.2 million for water and $4.2 million for wastewater.