Why Are Pflugerville’s Water Bills So High?
Pflugerville families are paying some of the highest water bills in Central Texas — already around $193/month and projected to climb past $212–$234/month in the next year.
The main reason isn’t how much water you use. It’s the debt the city took on.
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Instead of stage gating infrastructure construction, Pflugerville borrowed nearly $1 billion for new water and wastewater infrastructure all at once, a new pipeline, treatment plant, and the Wilbarger Creek wastewater facility.
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Those loans (including a $156M EPA WIFIA loan and a $462M master agreement) require the city to bring in a guaranteed minimum of revenue every year.
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That’s why your base fee, the fixed charge before you even turn on the tap, keeps rising. Bondholders must be paid first.
Conservation, tier tweaks, or drought surcharges don’t change this. Even if everyone used less water, the city would still raise base fees to make the numbers add up. In fact, now that we'll have enough water for a city 3X our size, we want to sell MORE water.
What We Can Do Right Now
​We can’t erase debt that’s already issued. But we can protect families from runaway increases.
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Freeze base fees for 12 months.
Stop the automatic hikes in 2026 by trimming city operating costs (delaying non-critical hires, cutting waste in operations and maintenance) and redirecting surpluses into debt coverage. -
Max out developer impact fees.
Update and enforce water and wastewater impact fees so new subdivisions pay the real cost of growth instead of pushing it onto existing residents. -
Plug household leaks and stop surprise bills.
Fully deploy the city’s WaterSmart leak-detection portal and make the leak adjustment program automatic, so families don’t get hammered by one-off disasters. -
Open the books.
Every project cost, every dollar of debt, and every penny collected from your bill should be published in plain English. If you’re paying it, you should see it. No more “trust us.”
Next Steps
Immediate relief buys us time, but the bigger changes require discipline:​
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Restructure repayment, don’t front-load it.
WIFIA loans allow up to 35-year terms and flexible repayment. We should push principal into later years so today’s residents aren’t crushed while the population base is still small. As the city grows, more people will help carry the fixed costs. -
Pay debt down whenever possible.
Every dollar from refinancing savings, land sales, or true budget surpluses should be used to retire bonds early. That directly reduces future base-fee pressure. -
Phase projects, don’t pile them.
Never again approve a $200M+ mega-project all at once. Build in $20–30M stages that track growth. That keeps debt manageable and predictable. -
Hold growth inside the city.
Every new house built in Hutto or Round Rock is one less family helping pay Pflugerville’s fixed costs. By streamlining permits and eliminating unnecessary code hurdles, we keep growth inside our system, where it helps lower everyone’s share. -
Sell our now surplus of water.
Now that we will be producing enough water for a city 3X times our size, we need to do everything we can to sell as much of that as we can. Either to other cities or to big users within Pflugerville. The more we sell, the more income our water utility makes and the less of the bond payments we have to pay from our base fees.
For the Future
If we stick to discipline:
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Bills will level off instead of climbing year after year.
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As the city grows, fixed costs will be spread across more households and businesses, lowering the per-family burden.
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Paying debt down early will shorten the timeline to true rate relief, instead of dragging obligations out to the next generation.
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Pflugerville will stay competitive for businesses, instead of scaring them away with water bills that are three times higher than Austin's.
The Bottom Line
Runaway water debt is already brutally squeezing families and small businesses. We can’t erase the past, but we can stop making it worse. The path forward is simple: freeze fees now, force growth to pay its way, phase projects responsibly, and pay debt down instead of piling more on.
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That’s the only way to keep Pflugerville livable for all of us.
