Aquarion Water Co. will withdraw an $88 million revenue request once its sale closes, pulling the plug on a 42% rate hike that more than 60 state lawmakers had fought to kill.
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Aquarion Water Co. will abandon its request for a 42% rate increase once its pending sale closes, the company confirmed Thursday, handing a victory to more than 60 state lawmakers who had urged regulators to reject it.
Peter Fazekas, Aquarion’s director of corporate communications, said the company will pull its pending rate application before the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority once ownership transfers to the Aquarion Water Authority, the nonprofit quasi-public entity set to acquire the utility in a roughly $2.4 billion deal.
“Once the sale closes, the rate review application will be withdrawn,” Fazekas said.
Aquarion filed the application in December 2025 and updated it in January, seeking $88 million in additional annual revenue — an average increase of about 42% for its approximately 735,000 customers in 60 municipalities.
On June 11, a bipartisan group of more than 60 lawmakers, led by state Reps. Matt Blumenthal (D-Stamford) and Jonathan Steinberg (D-Westport) urged PURA to reject any unjustified costs and shield customers from what they called an unsustainable increase.
“Water is not a discretionary expense,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is a fundamental human need and a public health necessity. PURA must not treat this proceeding as a routine rate case.”
The lawmakers argued that PURA’s March approval of the Aquarion Water Authority acquisition had undermined one of the utility’s key arguments for the increase.
“The sale has now been approved by PURA,” they wrote. “This should void any associated arguments for a rate increase.”
Under Aquarion Water Authority ownership, rate increases are expected to be smaller and more frequent than the larger, less frequent filings typically made by investor-owned utilities, Fazekas said.
PURA’s approval order also prohibits the authority from raising rates for 180 days after the transaction closes.
Eversource has said it expects the sale to close before year-end.
