Water rates are in the local news again because Albany wants to raise them in January. But this time, ratepayers ought to get a better explanation than they have received so far.

Albany's rates are not the highest in Oregon, but they are at or near the top. A comparison compiled by the Democrat-Herald, published Monday, showed water in Albany costing twice as much as in many comparable towns, or even more.

And this is so even when the comparison is extended across the country. The Portland Water Bureau published an online comparison last winter showing that, for example, people were averaging about $16 a month for water even in arid Phoenix, Ariz. In Albany the average bill is $41.

The cost of water, of course, is not in the raw material. The city takes water out of the Santiam River system for nothing. The cost is in the treatment and distribution of all that free water.

But even those vital functions make up only a fraction of the expenses of the water fund: Treatment accounted for just 10 percent of the system's cost last budget year, and distribution added another 13 percent. Canal maintenance was a mere 2 percent.

Even paying off the bonds sold to finance the new Scravel Hill treatment plant accounted for less than a quarter of the fund, just 23 percent.

The city said 14 percent of the fund went to administration and customer service, and a whopping 38 percent to capital projects, which mostly means the replacement of leaky pipes in the ground. That backs up the rationale the public usually gets for the high price: Albany is modernizing its water system earlier or faster than other places, so when those other places do the same, as they eventually must, their rates will catch up and be high as well.

But this explanation has been the same for a number of years. As for the catching up in other towns, it still has not taken place.

Before enacting the next uptick in the rates, the council ought to re-examine what makes up the rates, especially the component of administration.

Albany's rates are so high because it's just about the only city in the country modernizing its plant? That's getting harder to believe. (hh)