Water fee waived again

For the second year in a row, the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) has announced that the annual water and sewer maintenance fee will be waived for all community members in good standing.

“We’re trying to find different ways to provide direct benefit to the community, because that’s the feedback we got from our people,” said MCK chief Paul Rice, the lead portfolio chief on the economic development file.

The annual fee is $59, a rate that has stayed the same since it was standardized in 1982. Last year, the rebate was announced as a one-time form of relief in part due to funds “repatriated” as a result of Mohawk Online’s partnership with Entain coming to an end the previous year.

When that partnership ended, money from the company’s operational reserves was returned to the MCK, giving flexibility to offer the rebate.

This time, Rice said that MCK’s current financial standing means that it’s able to once more offer the financial relief to community members. The organization’s financial security can be attributed at least in part to revenues from gaming – revenue from electronic gaming devices (EGD) currently sit at close to $30 million a year, making it a key part of Kahnawake’s own-source wealth.

Streams of revenue like this give more opportunity to provide financial relief to the community, Rice said.

“We’re still in a very good financial position, our budget’s going to be coming out shortly and we’re projecting surplus, and this past year we finished as well with a projected surplus, so overall the finances are good and so $59 is a drop in the bucket,” he said.

The current fee totals about $140,000 that is typically gathered to maintain the water and sewer network. While Rice acknowledged that $59 may not make a huge difference to some households, he said that the Council table still felt it was important to waive the fee for the community.

“We believe our community members deserve access to water one way or another, it wasn’t that there was a specific financial windfall that allowed us to do this, it was more that it didn’t make sense to be billing a small amount that community members should have access to,” he said.

The waiver applies to all units for the coming year, and in addition, primary residence units will have the fee waived for another fiscal year, extending into 2026-2027.

Rice hopes that small waivers like this, combined with initiatives like the $500 one-time inflation benefit and the handout of 500 free turkeys during the festive season, will be seen as MCK responding to feedback from the community to take action that directly impacts households in the short-term, alongside projects like the Sovereign Wealth Fund, that are hoped to yield financial gains in the long-run.

“It’s in line with our political priority of improving quality of life for our community members,” he said.

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