Honolulu residents’ sewer bills could be reduced or zeroed out completely for a few months under a city program launching Friday.
Beginning May 1, the City and County of Honolulu will launch the Customer Assistance for Residential Environmental Services — or CARES — program, where eligible customers can apply for a credit to reduce their sewer bills.
The program comes amidst a series of incremental hikes to sewer fees. Last year, the city announced that it will increase fees annually over the next six years in order to raise the additional revenue required to complete federally mandated upgrades to wastewater systems — most significantly, upgrades to the Sand Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, for which an environmental impact statement is currently being drafted.
The Department of Environmental Services (ENV) estimates that a median single-family residential sewer bill — about $100 monthly — will increase to more than $160 by 2031. The first rate hike has already taken effect in January, and the next is set to take place in July.
The CARES program was devised to help defray these costs, said city Managing Director Mike Formby on Thursday.
The $10 million program is available to active residential sewer customers who are up to date on their sewer bills and with a household income below 80% of the area median income — ENV estimates some 41,000 households meet these criteria. Successful applicants will receive a credit of $240 for the year.
ENV Director Roger Babcock said Thursday that the initial concept for CARES would grant eligible sewer users a $20 credit per month: “something large enough to make a difference,” he said, noting that $20 is about one-fifth of the median household sewer bill.
However, CARES will dole out benefits in a single annual $240 credit.
While ENV describes the credit as “equivalent to a credit of $20 [per] month,” in practice the credit will likely only last for a few months for most users. Babcock said the credit is applied to users’ accounts all at once, with each monthly bill drawing from the credit until it is spent.
Babcock said it is simpler for ENV to apply the credit all at once in this way, and that applying monthly $20 credits would be a greater logistical challenge.
Meanwhile, Babcock said users can change their own water usage habits to save money further. At the start of the year, ENV reconfigured its fee structure to reduce the percentage of a sewer bill made up by fixed fees and increase the percentage made up by volumetric fees — in other words, a greater portion of sewer bills are based on how much water is used, meaning that conserving water now has a greater impact on reducing one’s sewer bill.
City Councilman Tyler Dos Santos-Tam said users who conserve water use could get several months of sewer bills completely zeroed out; Babcock said some households have sewer bills of only around $40 or $50, which would allow them to have five to six months of bills completely paid for through CARES.
It is free to apply for CARES and applications can be found online or at satellite city halls or O‘ahu public libraries. However, ENV can only accept physical applications, either via mail or dropped off at ENV offices.
Applicants must submit their most recent sewer bill and their 2025 federal and state tax returns. Applications take at least 30 days to be processed, and will be approved on a first-come-first-served basis.
More information about how to apply can be found here.
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