Cities That Charge The Most For Water

To find the cities where water is most costly, we could have simply compared water bills. But that approach ignores affordability, so we also factored in household income in each city.

Our water costs include both water and sewer charges, since the two are usually billed together and the EPA typically measures them that way.

Incomes vary widely from city to city. Minneapolis has a median household income of more than $77,000, while Detroit’s is just $39,000. That gap is the main reason Detroit ranks No. 2 on our list despite its relatively low bills.

Water bill data comes from doxo, a company that simplifies bill payments and publishes several reports on bill payments each year. The figures are based on what people paid for water during the 12 months ending in March 2025. We took doxo’s median monthly bills and multiplied them by 12. The data is part of its doxoInsights “2026 U.S. Household Bill Report.”

Income figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey and reflect the median household income of each city’s residents.

We divided each city’s annual bill by its median household income to calculate the share of income spent on water and sewer, then ranked the cities from highest to lowest.

Cities Where Water and Sewer Bills Take the Biggest Share of Household Income

Rank	City	Monthly bill	Annual bill	Median household income	Share of income
1	Milwaukee	$200	$2,400	$56,792	4.2%
2	Detroit	$80	$960	$39,209	2.4%
3	St. Paul, MN	$129	$1,548	$70,182	2.2%
4	El Paso, TX	$110	$1,320	$59,932	2.2%
5	Minneapolis	$132	$1,584	$77,732	2.0%
6	Kansas City, KS	$105	$1,260	$63,917	2.0%
7	Louisville, KY	$110	$1,320	$67,251	2.0%
8	Rochester, NY	$76	$912	$46,882	2.0%
9	Columbus, OH	$107	$1,284	$67,084	1.9%
10	Birmingham, AL	$81	$972	$51,355	1.9%
11	Dayton, OH	$71	$852	$45,846	1.9%
12	Baltimore	$100	$1,200	$64,778	1.9%
13	Memphis	$81	$972	$52,679	1.8%
14	Miami	$100	$1,200	$66,337	1.8%
15	Cleveland	$65	$780	$43,383	1.8%

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