In short
Rubbish Talk rates CBS MoneyWatch's claim that "Americans are paying 62% more for water than a decade ago" a 2/10 because the figure matches Food & Water Watch's primary report exactly, and CBS discloses the methodology and its limits in the body.
The Verdict
Lightly altered, close to base fact. CBS reports the headline number correctly and, unlike some competitors, specifies in the body that the study covers drinking water only, excludes wastewater and stormwater, and comes from an advocacy group rather than a government agency. The one iteration away from clean is that the headline doesn't flag the source as an advocacy nonprofit, a framing choice that slightly over-states the finding's neutrality, though the body corrects this within the first paragraph.
What actually happened
Food & Water Watch, a Washington-based advocacy nonprofit, compiled and analyzed water billing data for the 500 largest community water systems in 2025, which collectively served 155 million people, and compared typical household water bills in 2025 to those in 2015. The group found costs grew 1.6 times faster than overall inflation over that decade, and the analysis measured charges for a fixed 60,000-gallon annual usage benchmark, excluding wastewater and stormwater fees.
Key facts
- Household drinking water bills rose 62% over the last decade, adding nearly $200 a year onto household water costs.
- That increase compares with a roughly 39% jump in overall consumer prices and a 30% rise in grocery prices over roughly the same period.
- Water bills increased 19% faster than the US median household income.
- For-profit utilities collected an average of $823 annually from a typical household, versus $494 at publicly owned systems, a difference of $329, or about two-thirds more.
- The group compared the results to its last water study, conducted a decade ago, doing an apples-to-apples comparison between 452 systems in 2015 and 2025, after accounting for consolidations and other changes in the sector.
- Geographic spread: the top three states with the highest average rate hikes were New Hampshire (177%), Oregon (114%), and West Virginia (95%).
What to watch for
Watch whether later coverage keeps noting the study's advocacy-group origin and its exclusion of wastewater/stormwater fees, since bundling those back in would push total household water-related costs higher still. Also watch the state-by-state splits (New Hampshire's 177% jump versus Idaho's low base): regional variation is easy to flatten into a single national number in future headlines. Finally, watch for pushback from private water utilities, which the report singles out for charging significantly more than public systems.
