If you are from Hillsboro, Oregon, you can set your clock by utility rates going up, and once again it is time to line up a sewer and water rate increase! Are you ready for this again? Because sewer and stormwater rates are going to go up again! If you are tired of the never-ending treadmill of price increases on everything from groceries to housing, look out: the City of Hillsboro is about to step up the pressure on your monthly utility bill.
On Tuesday, July 7, 2026, the Hillsboro City Council will hold a crucial work session to review proposed rate increases for our sanitary sewer and stormwater utilities . While city staff frames these hikes as “low and consistent,” the real story under the surface reveals a fundamental issue of economic equity . Regular residents are being asked to foot the bill for a massive system-wide backlog, much of it accelerated by the massive influx of data centers and industrial expansion in North Hillsboro .
It is time for the community to get involved, look upstream, and demand answers.
The Breakdown: What’s Coming to Your Bill?
When you cut through the confusing phrasing in the staff report, here is what the total monthly utility bill, which bundles together the City of Hillsboro, Clean Water Services (CWS), and Hillsboro Water charges, will actually look like for a typical single-family home:
- Current Total Combined Bill: $149.71 a month.
- Proposed Year 1 Total Bill: $153.89 a month (A jump of $4.18 or 2.8%)
- Proposed Year 2 Total Bill: $160.46 a month (An additional jump of $6.57 or 4.3%)
The city points out that the first-year increase is lower because the regional Clean Water Services rate increase took effect on July 1. But by Year 2, when the city’s compounding 5% local hikes merge with regional baseline cost increases, local families will be paying over $127 more per year out of pocket just to keep the water moving. All of this occurs while the upstream industrial giants driving these capacity issues escape localized infrastructure fees.
The Drivers: The $23.8 Million Bottleneck
Why is our system under such severe flow pressure ? Look no further than the Glencoe Swale project.
The city’s staff report explicitly admits that Hillsboro’s stormwater system is in “poor overall” condition and faces a massive $120 million investment backlog just to stabilize it . Astoundingly, a single project, the Glencoe Road crossing, is priced at $23.8 million . That means one single bottleneck accounts for nearly 20% of the city’s entire high-priority stormwater deficit …