If it feels like your water bill has been climbing faster than almost everything else, you are not imagining it. A new national report from Food and Water Watch finds that household drinking water bills rose 62 percent over the past decade, outpacing inflation, groceries, and paychecks, and it puts Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania squarely among the most expensive places in the country to turn on the tap.
Food and Water Watch compiled the water bills of the 500 largest community water systems in the country, which together serve about 155 million people, and compared 2025 to 2015. Bills are up 62 percent on average, faster than inflation and more than twice as fast as grocery prices, and they now outrun household incomes too. For-profit systems charged more than public ones, and in nearly all of the systems studied, water was unaffordable for low-income households. Pennsylvania shows up again and again on the list of the priciest systems, including several around Pittsburgh. The full report is linked below.
What the numbers say
The report pegs the average annual drinking water bill at 531 dollars in 2025, for a household using about 60,000 gallons, but the range is enormous: from 133 dollars a year at the cheapest system to 1,416 dollars at the most expensive, a tenfold spread. Over the decade, the average bill climbed 62 percent, which the report measures at about 1.6 times the overall inflation rate and more than double the rise in grocery prices. Water also grew 19 percent faster than the median household income, so families are handing over a larger slice of a stretched paycheck just to keep the water on. In 93 percent of the systems analyzed, the report found water bills that were unaffordable for the lowest-income households.
Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh are in the thick of it
This is not a far-away story for the Upper Ohio Basin. Several of the 25 most expensive systems in the entire country sit in Pennsylvania. American Water’s Pittsburgh system charged a typical household about 1,356 dollars in 2025, up 71 percent over the decade, and Aqua Pennsylvania was right behind it at about 1,351 dollars, up 73 percent. Pittsburgh’s own public system was not far off at roughly 1,223 dollars, and it posted one of the steepest jumps in the country, up 152 percent since 2015. Just across the line, West Virginia had the highest statewide average of anywhere, about 1,383 dollars. In other words, some of the most expensive and fastest-rising water bills in America are being paid by our own neighbors.
It helps to be precise here. Both corporate and publicly owned systems in Pennsylvania land on the expensive end of the scale, so this is not a simple story of one villain. Pittsburgh’s steep increase came from a public utility working to dig out of decades of deferred maintenance, while the American Water and Aqua systems are investor-owned and rate-regulated by the state Public Utility Commission.
Why who owns the pipes matters
Across all 500 systems, the report found that for-profit, corporate-owned utilities charged more than public ones, an average of 823 dollars a year compared with 494 dollars, a difference of 329 dollars, or about 67 percent. Food and Water Watch argues that corporate control is itself a driver of higher bills and calls for limits on water privatization and renewed federal investment. It is fair to note the other side of the ledger: utilities of every kind are wrestling with aging pipes, the cost of removing contaminants like PFAS, climate-driven repairs, and a long pullback in federal support that has pushed more of the bill onto local ratepayers. The report acknowledges those pressures even as it makes its case. Readers can weigh the argument and the data for themselves, which is exactly why we are linking the full report rather than just summarizing it.
Why it matters for the rest of us
Clean water that nobody can afford is not much of a win, and affordability is becoming one of the central water fights of the decade across this basin. This report is the hard data underneath a point we made recently about water being a kitchen-table issue: when a bill jumps by half or doubles in ten years, people feel it, regardless of how they vote. Knowing where your own system falls, and why, is the first step toward doing something about it. Read the report, look up your own utility, and keep the receipts. Small numbers on a monthly bill add up to a very big picture.
Drawn from Food and Water Watch, “Surging Water Costs amid the US Affordability Crisis,” 2026, an analysis of drinking water bills at the 500 largest community water systems. Figures for individual systems, including American Water Pittsburgh, Aqua Pennsylvania, and the Pittsburgh public system, are from the report’s rate tables. Current as of October 9, 2026.
