For the thousands of Liberty Utilities' Nassau water customers facing sticker shock by skyrocketing water bills this summer, a retired Baldwin financial analyst with a $400 monthly water bill found answers, if not relief: Residential customers are paying a higher share of a hike than expected.

When the state Public Service Commission first announced the increase last August, it said the "levelized" increase for customers in Liberty's westernmost Nassau service area 1 would be 17%.

But the PSC figure and subsequent explanations by Liberty didn’t compute for Baldwin resident Steven Faske, who started crunching the numbers on his bill last fall. Right away he found the expected publicized 17% increase was actually 23% for all classes of usage.

"It seemed very high," he said.

WHAT NEWSDA

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