Honolulu Board of Water Supply (BWS), City and County of Honolulu

Provider briefing

How this utility’s billing works

Honolulu Board of Water Supply (BWS), City and County of Honolulu operates as a public water authority serving Oʻahu, including Honolulu and the Board of Water Supply service communities. 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 Increasing block residential rates billed per 1,000 gallons, with a meter-size customer charge. Under the schedule effective July 1, 2026, a 5/8- or 3/4-inch meter has a $17.30 monthly charge; single-family water is $4.92 per 1,000 gallons for the first 2,000 gallons, $7.51 for 2,001-6,000 gallons, $8.98 for 6,001-30,000 gallons, and $15.06 above 30,000 gallons. Multi-unit residential has a separate four-tier schedule. Non-residential water is a uniform $7.54/1,000 gallons effective July 1, 2026. Usage is rounded down to the nearest 1,000 gallons.. Bills are generated monthly. bws's rate schedule assesses a customer charge each month, charges water quantity by monthly usage, and its public financial materials state that meters are read and bills rendered monthly., and a typical residential cost reference is Approximately $50 for 5,000 gallons of BWS single-family water alone under the July 1, 2026 schedule: $17.30 customer charge plus 2,000 gallons at $4.92 and 3,000 gallons at $7.51, or about $49.67 before sewer. For a property billed by the City and County of Honolulu sewer system, a rough combined water-and-sewer estimate is about $145 at that usage: July 2026 sewer base charge $48.27 plus 80% of 5,000 gallons at $11.83/1,000 gallons, or about $95.59 sewer. Actual totals vary with metered gallons, sewer eligibility, irrigation submetering, and billing period.. 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

Honolulu's Department of Environmental Services administers sewer charges while BWS commonly bills and collects the combined account. For a single-family or duplex dwelling served by city water, the July 1, 2026 sewer schedule sets a $48.27 monthly base charge plus $11.83 per 1,000 gallons of metered water, with the metered water reduced by a 20% water-irrigation factor. A residential customer with a separately maintained submeter for non-sewer water may avoid that 20% reduction treatment for the submetered non-sewer volume. Sewer rates are set by the City, not BWS.

Meter and infrastructure notes

BWS bills monthly and uses automated meter reading (AMR) equipment with radio transponders for drive-by reads, supplemented by manual or estimated readings when a meter cannot be read. A 2024 BWS resolution reports more than 19,000 AMR equipment replacements since 2021, a drive-by read rate improved from 84% to 97%, and an estimated-bill rate below 2%. BWS materials describe radio pickup of AMR readings rather than full hourly customer-facing AMI; the system is being modernized through electronic-register and transponder replacement.