(Photo by Sky Schaudt - KJZZ)

Water faucet

Earlier this week, Goodyear approved a utility plan that will increase water rates by about 33 percent over five years.

The money will help update aging groundwater wells and other outdated water infrastructure. Mark Holmes, Goodyear’s water resources manager, said these upgrades come at a good time because of growth in the city and to avoid future infrastructure failure.

“You try and have the resiliency and robustness built into your system so that you don’t have a loss of service, which basically creates a loss of trust in the utility," he said.

Holmes said Goodyear’s infrastructure has 50-year-old wells that need to be rehabilitated or replaced, in addition to 20-year-old reclamation plants and pipes.  

“We don’t want to wait til they fail," he said. "We’re seeing efficiency decrease in these wells, we don’t want the casings to collapse, so we’re trying to avoid that catastrophic failure that could potentially cause some sort of service interruption."

An average customer paying $71.56 would see an increase to $78.75 in 2016.