Humble raises water rates 10 percent on October 1. Its own billing page still shows the 2025 schedule.

Humble’s city council approved a 10 percent water rate increase that takes effect October 1. Sixteen days out, the city’s own water billing page still posts the schedule that took effect June 1, 2025.

Why it matters

This increase lands on top of a 20 percent increase that took effect in June 2025. Compounded, that is roughly 32 percent on water in about 28 months. A Humble household cannot find out what it will pay from the story that broke the news or from the city’s billing page.

By the numbers

10 percent on residential and commercial water, effective October 1, 2026.
20 percent on both water and sewer before this, approved May 22, 2025 and effective June 1, 2025. The adjustment before that was August 2024.
32 percent compounded on water across those two increases. That is arithmetic on the two published percentages.
$18.73 is the published residential water base for the first 3,000 gallons, with $3.16 per 1,000 gallons above that and $3.47 above 10,000. Sewer base is $38.52. Seniors pay a $6.75 base on each.
$57.25 is the standard combined water and sewer bill under the current schedule, for a household using under 3,000 gallons of each.
30 to 60 percent: the share of its water Humble was required to buy from Houston starting July 1, 2025, under the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District.
September 24, 6:30 p.m., City Hall, 114 W. Higgins St.: Humble’s separate public hearing on a tax increase, posted September 11.

What the coverage buried

Community Impact’s Tuesday story is a rate story with no rates in it. It gives a percentage and an effective date. It does not give the current base rate, the new base rate, the per-thousand-gallon charge or a monthly bill figure. A reader finishes it knowing the direction and not the amount.

It also gives no vote date and no vote count. The same outlet’s story on the 2025 increase gave both: approved May 22, effective June 1. And it does not say whether sewer rates move with water this time. In 2025 the two moved together, 20 percent each.

The city manager’s explanation is in the story and it is a real one. What is missing next to it is the denominator. Ten percent sounds modest. Ten percent on rates that already rose 20 percent sixteen months ago is a different number, and neither the story nor the city has printed it.

The other side

The mandate is real and Humble did not write it. City Manager Jason Stuebe tied the increases to “the purchase of 60% of our water supply from the city of Houston’s surface water resources as required by the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District.” Houston’s own water rates rise on a schedule. A city that buys most of its water from Houston at Houston’s prices will pass that through, and a city that refuses to pass it through ends up with a utility fund that does not cover its own costs. Stuebe has said future increases would be more modest.

All of that argues for the increase. None of it explains publishing a percentage without a rate, or leaving the new schedule off the city’s billing page with two weeks to go. The mandate is a reason to raise the price. It is not a reason for the ratepayer to learn the amount from a news site.

What to watch

October 1, when the increase takes effect, and whether the city’s water billing page carries the new schedule by then.
September 24, 6:30 p.m. at City Hall: the tax increase hearing, a separate matter on the same household.
Whether sewer rates move with water, as they did in 2025.
Houston’s next water rate change, which Humble’s future increases are tied to.

Bottom line

Humble’s water rate goes up 10 percent on October 1, on top of 20 percent in June 2025. The city has a real reason and a mandate it did not choose. It also has sixteen days to put the number on its own billing page.

Sources

Editorial