Rising costs are a part of life. But when necessities like power and water start creeping skyward, everyone starts asking questions.

In Vidalia, the price of electricity skyrocketed last fall. In Natchez, water prices will likely go up soon.

Officials on both sides of the river say they understand what price hikes can do to customers, and both towns say they have worked to avoid increases.

Natchez Water Works hasn’t seen a rate increase since 1994. Costs went up and profits went down over the decade, but Water Works made do, until now.

Vidalia’s electricity prices started going up in September 2004. The city absorbed the difference until 2006.

Now, the City of Vidalia’s utility rates are dropping, and Mayor Hyram Copeland couldn’t be happier about it.

“Can you think of any other municipality — or private company, for that matter — that is lowering rates?” he said.

The announcement that rates would drop about 12 percent for the average residential customer and about 10 percent for the average commercial customer was made on April 10.

The rate reduction will go into effect May 1.

“For a commercial client with a $10,000 bill, that’s going to save them $1,000,” Copeland said.

The price of electricity has decreased slightly for the city, Copeland said.

The drop in rates is long overdue, Vidalia resident Angel McCage said.

“I’m hoping they do (lower them),” McCage said. “We only turn on our air conditioner at certain times of the day. And I’ve got a newborn in the house.”

McCage said her electric bill ranged anywhere from $300 to $500 each month, something she and others on a fixed income couldn’t afford.

“It’s just outrageous,” she said. “Even with fans going, it’s so expensive.”

Ada Wright, a Vidalia resident, said she, too, paid around $300 a month in electric bills.

“And I’m by myself, and I don’t use the heating or air,” Wright said.

For residents like McCage and Wright, the mayor’s plans might mean a break.

Copeland said that he hopes to be able to lower rates even more.

He is currently negotiating a contract with the Louisiana Electrical Power Authority —which already supplies some of Vidalia’s electrical power — that will reduce prices even further, he said.

Copeland is the current president of LEPA.

The rate reduction was allowed because of strategic budget cuts, Copeland said.

One of those ways the budget was parsed to allow the rate decrease was to find ways to extend the lives of city equipment for another year, he said.

“We’ll just wait to buy some equipment,” he said.

Copeland said rumors of public services like the police and fire departments taking cuts to help the rate reduction along are just that — rumors.

“We’re not going to cut down on our services,” he said. “We just got a grant to buy a new police car.”

The city is operating efficiently and in the black, he said.

The reason that rates were raised in the first place is because of a rise in production cost, he said.

“There was a 60 percent rate increase in production, but we didn’t pass on that kind of increase to the people,” Copeland said.

One of the biggest reasons for the rate hike was the price of natural gas, which nearly doubled in two years, he said.

Across the river, Natchez Water Works is awaiting board approval for a rate hike.

Without a rise in rates in more than a decade, the waterworks is losing money. Because they’re not making a profit — losing about $1 million each year — the waterworks is in violation of both the state health department’s and bond financers’ requirements. That could mean big problems in the future, officials have said.

Costs of operation have risen, too, Water Works Superintendent David Gardner said. Vidalia might also have felt it, he said.

“Since 1994, our fuel costs alone have doubled,” Gardner said.

The last rate hike, in 1994, was 39 percent. The goal was for it to be viable for the next 10 years. But because industries like International Paper left and residents followed, the income didn’t match what Water Works had projected.

Now, they’re looking at raising rates roughly 19 percent this year.

If that rate increase is approved, the waterworks will ask the board of aldermen to review the need for a small hike — two to three percent — each year for five years after that.

Hopefully, that will lessen the financial blow of huge rate increases, Gardner said.

“That’s the way I’d like to see it done,” he said.

And he said he could see how Vidalia residents might be upset with the recent power costs.

“Nobody wants higher rates,” he said.

But Vidalia’s power rates are moving in opposite direction.

Another reason Vidalia was able to lower rates was money generated by the S.A. Murray Hydroelectric Generation Station, Copeland said.

The plant makes a quarterly royalty payment to the city of Vidalia, Station General Manager David Harris said.

“That payment is subject not to be paid if production falls below a certain point,” Harris said.

The city was not able to utilize proceeds from the station because the last few years have been low water years, thus reducing station production, Copeland said.

“Our production is subject to the conditions of the Mississippi River and its tail waters,” Harris said.

The city is obligated to buy six percent of the power generated at the station, Harris said.

Entergy buys the remaining 94 percent.

The current contract between the city and the plant, owned by the Canadian Brookfield Power Company, will expire in 2032, Harris said.

When the contract expires, one of the options might be for the town to buy the station, he said.

Another option would be for the contract to be renewed or a similar agreement struck, he said.