American households paid a median of $1,065 for water and sewer service over the past year, according to a new industry report, a bill that rarely gets its own line item the way rent or groceries do. In Maryland, the same report found a typical monthly water and sewer bill of $245, the highest of any state in the country. Water and sewer costs have kept climbing even as most household attention stays fixed on electricity and gas.
The figures come from doxo, a bill-payment platform that tracked actual water and sewer payments from more than 10 million consumers across 97% of U.S. ZIP codes. Nationally, 72% of households pay a water and sewer bill directly, and the median monthly payment worked out to $89, up 2.8% from a year earlier.
The National Median Works Out to $89 a Month
The doxo 2026 U.S. Utilities Market Size and Household Spending Report put the national water and sewer market at an estimated $139 billion a year, built from a median household payment of $89 a month, or $1,065 annualized. The report counted only households that pay a water or sewer bill directly, 72% of the country, leaving out renters and others whose water is bundled into rent or a homeowners association fee.
Water and sewer costs rose 2.8% year over year in the report, a smaller jump than electricity, which posted the largest increase of any utility category at 6.46%. Even so, water and sewer bills climbed steadily enough that the report’s analysts flagged them, alongside waste and recycling service, as a category still trending upward on the back of infrastructure spending and rising operating costs at local utilities.
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Maryland’s $245 Monthly Bill Is the Highest in the Country
Maryland households pay more for water and sewer service than anywhere else in the country, with a median monthly bill of $245. That single line item helped push Maryland to the nation’s highest overall median utility cost, $625 a month across every category doxo tracked, from electricity and water to internet and trash pickup.
Vermont ranked second for water and sewer costs at a median $162 a month, followed by Washington state at $153 and Wisconsin at $145. Each of those figures is a monthly number, not an annual one, which is why Maryland’s $245 monthly bill looks so much larger set next to the $89 national monthly median from the same report. The comparison is monthly to monthly; the $1,065 figure used for the national headline is that same $89 median simply annualized.
Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission Bills Show Why Maryland Costs So Much
Much of Maryland’s population is billed by the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, the government-run utility serving Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. Its fiscal year 2027 rate schedule, effective July 1, 2026, charges tiered rates that climb from $7.68 per 1,000 gallons of water at the lowest usage tier to $11.70 at the highest, with sewer charges running from $10.22 to $18.82 per 1,000 gallons on top of that. A flat sewer charge of $175 per quarter is added to every residential bill regardless of usage.
WSSC Water describes itself as a self-supporting government enterprise, meaning its rates are set to cover the cost of maintaining and repairing buried pipes and treatment plants rather than being subsidized through general tax revenue. That cost-of-service model, common among water utilities nationally, is part of why states with older pipe networks and higher labor and treatment costs post some of the highest water and sewer bills in the doxo report.
Water Bills Rank Behind Electricity for the Fastest Increase
Water and sewer service was not the fastest-rising utility bill in the doxo report; electricity was, climbing 6.46% over the year measured. But the report’s total picture shows utility costs broadly outpacing typical wage growth: the median American household now spends $4,361 a year, or $363 a month, across all utility categories combined, an amount doxo estimates at roughly 5% of annual household income.
Because water and sewer bills are usually set by a single local utility rather than a competitive market, a household cannot shop around the way it might for an electricity plan or an internet provider. Rate increases approved by a utility board or public service commission apply to every customer in the service area, which is part of why a state like Maryland can end up with a bill far above the national median even when usage habits stay the same.
Millions of Households Already Call Water Bills Unaffordable
The rising bills are not just a budgeting inconvenience for some households. The Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Affordability Needs Assessment estimates that between 12.1 million and 19.2 million households nationwide lack affordable access to water services, with the total cost of unaffordable water bills running between $5.1 billion and $8.8 billion a year.
EPA’s assessment measured affordability against a threshold of a household spending more than 3% to 4.5% of income on drinking water and wastewater bills combined. For a household already near that line, a bill running $89 a month nationally, or $245 a month in Maryland, is not a small entry on a monthly ledger. It is one of the larger fixed costs competing with rent, groceries and medical bills for the same paycheck.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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