Riverside Public Utilities – Water Division

Provider briefing

How this utility’s billing works

Riverside Public Utilities – Water Division operates as a municipal department serving Riverside and contiguous areas, including the majority of the City of Riverside and some unincorporated Riverside County areas. Customers should use the provider’s current account-specific bill and official customer-service instructions as the final authority for deadlines, balances, and service requests.

The published water-rate framework is described as Seasonal increasing block tiers with a fixed monthly customer charge. Under the 2026 portion of Schedule WA-1A, a 5/8- or 3/4-inch meter has a $33.36 monthly customer charge; winter and summer Tier 1 cover the first 8 CCF at $1.52 per CCF, Tier 2 covers 9–35 CCF at $2.23 per CCF, and Tier 3 is above 35 CCF at $3.57 in winter or $4.61 in summer. Summer rates apply to service rendered in June, July, August, September, and October; winter applies in the other months. The City may also apply an energy-cost adjustment and up to an 11.5% Water General Fund Transfer component.. Bills are generated monthly. riverside retrieves a water-meter reading around the same time each month; the bill identifies the reading period and calculates daily-average ccf use for the period. if the meter cannot be accessed, the bill may be estimated and subsequently corrected when a reliable reading is obtained., and a typical residential cost reference is Approximately $51.18 for a basic in-city 5/8- or 3/4-inch single-family customer using 7 CCF in a 2026 winter month, calculated from the $33.36 customer charge plus seven CCF at $1.52. A 5,000–7,000-gallon household uses roughly 6.7–9.4 CCF, so a realistic 2026 water-only range is approximately $51–$55 in winter and $51–$55 in summer while usage remains within Tier 2’s first 35 CCF, before energy adjustments, the Water General Fund Transfer, utility-user tax, sewer, trash, and other city-services charges. The City’s full utility bill can therefore be materially higher than the water-only estimate.. These descriptions are useful planning benchmarks; actual charges can change with meter size, usage, sewer averaging, local taxes, drought stages, or account-specific fees.

Wastewater and sewer calculation

Riverside Public Utilities bills water on CCF intake and includes city-service charges on the consolidated utility statement, while the City’s bill explanation states that sewer charges are based on customer type and size and help maintain the sewer system. The reviewed official pages do not describe a winter-water-average or a percentage-of-potable-water sewer formula, so the defensible description is a separate sewer schedule based on classification and service characteristics rather than an explicitly published intake multiplier. Sewer questions and sewer problems are routed to Riverside Public Works at (951) 826-5311.

Meter and infrastructure notes

Riverside retrieves a water-meter reading around the same time each month and bills the difference between current and previous readings in CCF, with one CCF approximately 748 gallons. Customers must keep clear access to the meter; if the City cannot read it, the bill may be estimated. The reviewed official materials describe scheduled monthly reads and meter rereads/tests but do not establish a full AMI hourly-transmission deployment or a named residential interval-data vendor. Customers can request a verification read, witness a meter test, and receive an adjustment when a misread, estimate error, or meter accuracy problem is confirmed.