Clovis's Proposed Water Rates Rise Fastest in Your Heaviest Months

The figure that has followed EPCOR's Clovis rate request around town is about 9%. That number is accurate for one particular bill: a home with a standard 5/8-inch meter that used 5,000 gallons in a month. Use more than that and the increase climbs. Under the pricing in EPCOR Water New Mexico's filing, the gallons that cost the most today also get the biggest increases.

The request is pending before the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission as Docket No. 26-0000103, filed August 31, 2026. It would be the first change to Clovis water rates since 2019. Once you know how the bill is built, you can tell where your own household falls between 9% and something noticeably bigger.

Three Prices for the Same Gallon

A Clovis residential water bill has a monthly meter charge plus a usage charge, and the usage charge comes in three steps. The first gallons each month are the cheapest. The next stretch costs more per gallon, and anything over 15,000 gallons costs the most. Here are the current and proposed prices for each step from the PRC customer notice, per 1,000 gallons:

The first block and the meter charge both go up 8%. The two upper blocks go up roughly two and a half times that much. A household that stays under 4,500 gallons sees almost exactly the headline increase. Every thousand gallons after that is priced at $5.97 instead of $4.92, and every thousand over 15,000 goes from $5.57 to $6.79.

So how big your increase is depends mostly on how much of your monthly use lands above that first 4,500 gallons.

The Same House in a Light Month and a Heavy One

EPCOR's notice shows typical bills for a 5/8-inch residential meter at several usage levels. These are base-rate bills, before the separate line items described further down.

• No water used: $15.06 now, $16.34 proposed, up $1.28
• 5,000 gallons: $35.21 now, $38.51 proposed, up $3.30, or 9%
• 10,000 gallons: $59.83 now, $68.35 proposed, up $8.52, or 14%
• 15,000 gallons: $84.45 now, $98.19 proposed, up $13.74, or 16%

Going from 5,000 to 15,000 gallons triples the gallons, and the dollar increase grows about fourfold. A household whose bill swings between a light month and a heavy one through the year would feel the request mostly in the heavy months. In a winter month near the bottom of the table, the change is a few dollars. In a month in the top rows, it's the 14% to 16% range.

The notice says these comparisons are informational and that the final rate design may differ. At EPCOR's October 20 community meeting at the Clovis Civic Center, State Rep. Martin Zamora asked whether the numbers were final. According to The Eastern New Mexico News, EPCOR spokesperson Matt Atwood said it was fair to expect some change through the regulatory process.

Finding Your Own Tier

EPCOR measures and bills water in units of 100 cubic feet, called Ccf, rather than in gallons. One Ccf equals 750 gallons. To see where your household lands:

1. Pull up a few past bills, ideally from different times of year, and find the usage line.
2. Multiply the Ccf figure by 750 to convert it to gallons.
3. Compare the result with the breakpoints: 4,500 gallons is 6 Ccf, and 15,000 gallons is 20 Ccf.
4. Line your months up against the typical-bill examples above to get a rough idea of your increase.

A month at 6 Ccf or less stays mostly at the 8% end. A month over 20 Ccf has gallons in all three blocks, including the one rising 22%.

Bigger Meters Carry the Steepest Jump

The meter charge is where the request gets steep. The standard 5/8-to-3/4-inch residential charge goes up 8%, but larger meters go up much more. A 1-inch meter goes from $22.60 to $31.86 a month, up 41%. A 1½-inch meter goes from $37.66 to $59.23, up 57%, and a 2-inch meter from $52.72 to $90.27, up 71%. Your meter size is listed on your bill. For a home on a 1-inch meter, the fixed part of the bill goes up by more than nine dollars before any water is used.

Pumping Less From More Wells

The reasons EPCOR gave at the Civic Center meeting help explain why water costs more to deliver even as Clovis uses less of it. Atwood's presentation put peak demand at about 9.5 million gallons a day, down from about 12 million since 2013. Even so, a declining aquifer has pushed EPCOR to expand its well field to 90 wells, 80 of them active, up from about 60 in 2009. The company says it has invested more than $47 million locally since 2018, including converting agricultural wells to municipal use, upgrading storage tanks, and extending a line to the Clovis Regional Airport. Atwood also pointed to eight years of inflation and rising costs for labor and chemicals since the 2019 rates took effect.

That spending shows up across the whole request. If approved, overall EPCOR revenue in Clovis would rise 22.89%. The filing also proposes a 10-year tank maintenance program costing $3,795,000 in total. Residential customers are only one part of that revenue picture. Southwest Cheese's use has grown from about 500,000 to 600,000 gallons a day in 2017 to about 1 million gallons a day. The filing would move the plant from an expired, individually negotiated contract to a new industrial rate class, with an estimated 50% increase. Daniel Bailet, recently retired as general manager of EPCOR's Clovis operation, told the meeting the request is not connected to data center service in the state.

The Smaller Lines on the Bill

Three other parts of the filing affect what a household pays. A new low-income program would give qualifying residential customers a $2.40 monthly credit, paid for by a volumetric surcharge on residential and commercial Clovis customers. A separate new surcharge would recover the cost of filing the rate case. A revised rider would let EPCOR adjust its usage rates from time to time to pass through the actual costs of purchased water and the electricity used to produce water. For homes inside city limits, the Clovis municipal franchise charge of 2% shows up as its own line item.

The Calendar From Here

The commission can approve, modify, or deny the request. The key dates in the PRC notice:

The Friday, November 13 intervention deadline applies only to people and groups that want to become formal parties to the case. Anyone else can comment without intervening, at any point before the commission makes its final decision. Written comments need to cite Docket No. 26-0000103 and can be filed through the PRCe360 docketing system or mailed to PRC Records, P.O. Box 1269, Santa Fe, NM 87504. To comment by phone or online during a commission open meeting, sign up by emailing [email protected] or calling (505) 490-7910. The notice says public comments are not considered evidence in the case. The February hearing will be livestreamed on the commission's YouTube channel and on its public hearings page. The full application, testimony, and schedules are posted on EPCOR's Clovis rate filing page and are also available at EPCOR's office at 1005 Norris Street. EPCOR's presentation said the process can take more than a year.

This probably isn't the last rate case before Clovis's water supply changes. The Eastern New Mexico News reported that Mayor Mike Morris has said rates could go up as much as 30% before the pipeline scheduled for completion in 2031. In a text message to the paper, he wrote that "it seems likely to me that EPCOR would need to file again between now and 2031," and that "the treated surface water will have its own impact on rates."

Keeping More of Your Months in the First Block

Because the steepest increases fall on the upper blocks, using less water in your heaviest months does the most to limit the effect. EPCOR offers free water conservation kits to New Mexico customers, including retrofit and audit kits with low-flow fixtures, toilet dye tablets for finding leaks, and a landscape watering card. EPCOR's water restrictions page encourages even-numbered addresses to water on even-numbered days and odd-numbered addresses on odd-numbered days. During a supply restriction, it asks customers to put off nonessential use, including irrigation.

This post reports on a pending utility filing and is general information, not legal or financial advice. For your own account, check details with EPCOR or the Public Regulation Commission.

Water costs are part of what it takes to run a Clovis home, and we track them the same way we track prices and inventory. If you'd like help estimating monthly utility costs on a home you own or are considering, The Waters Group with Tammy Waters can walk you through it. Request your free buyer/seller packet, or call us to talk it over.