Council shelves water tariff rise

TALAS — Talas city council yesterday postponed a proposed increase in household water tariffs, after weeks of public complaints and a crowded public session at which residents of several districts spoke against it.

The Talas Municipal Water Authority had asked for the increase to help pay for repairs to the city's network, which has about 540 km of mains, much of it Soviet-era steel and cast-iron pipe. The authority estimates that about 40 percent of the water it produces is lost to leaks or not billed. Household tariffs are set in som by the council, while commercial and industrial customers pay in dollars.

Councillors voted to defer the increase without setting a new date. Several said that households should not be asked to pay more while so much water was being lost. "Fix the pipes first, then come back to us," one councillor said during the debate. A representative of the authority told the council that current tariffs covered operating costs but not major repairs, which depend on allocations from the ISEZ budget.

The city administration, headed by a mayor appointed by the Governor, said it would discuss the authority's investment needs with the ISEZ government. The authority has made progress on leak detection since it installed a control system in 2016, but said it could not replace the oldest mains without new funding.