The Maine Agenda › Live in Maine

Water and Sewer Bills by Town in Greater Portland: Who Serves You and What You Actually Pay

Published August 5, 2026 · 11 min read

The first water bill after you move here is usually the one that confuses people. It arrives from an organization you have never heard of, for an amount that bears no relationship to what your friend two towns over pays, and it may or may not include sewer depending on which side of a municipal line your house sits on. Nobody hands you a sheet explaining this. The utility assumes you know, the town assumes the utility told you, and the closing attorney had other things to cover.

Here is the sheet. Every figure below comes from the utility's own published rate schedule, read on August 5, 2026, and every one of them is checkable against a link we give you.

One water utility, eleven towns, and a split that matters

The Portland Water District is not a city department. It describes itself as an independent quasi-municipality, and by its own count it serves more than 200,000 people through 56,000 customer accounts across 11 Greater Portland communities.

The split that catches new residents is between what PWD does for you and what it does not. In its own words, the district delivers water service to Falmouth, Raymond, Scarborough, South Portland, Standish, and Windham, and provides both water and wastewater service to Cape Elizabeth, Cumberland, Gorham, Portland, and Westbrook.

Read that carefully, because it is not the whole story on sewer. Falmouth is on the water-only list, yet Falmouth's sewer charge appears on PWD's municipal wastewater rate table anyway. The practical meaning is that PWD bills for wastewater in more towns than it treats it in, because sewer in this region is a collaboration between the district and the individual town, and PWD says so plainly on its rates page. The rate is the town's. The bill is the district's.

Four towns squarely inside Greater Portland are not PWD communities at all: Yarmouth, Freeport, Brunswick, and Topsham. They have their own utilities, their own rate structures, and, as we will show, meaningfully different prices.

One more caveat that saves phone calls. Being inside a PWD town does not mean your address is on the system. Plenty of houses in Cumberland Foreside, North Yarmouth, outer Gorham, Windham, and Scarborough are on private wells and septic tanks and receive no monthly bill at all. Their cost is a pump, a tank, and a septic pumping every few years instead. The district publishes a service area map, and the map, not the town line, is the answer.

What water costs on the Portland Water District

PWD's rate page carries an effective date of January 1, 2026. The standard residential meter is 5/8 inch, and the district charges a monthly minimum that includes the first 100 cubic feet.

There are two columns, and this is the first thing worth knowing: member towns pay less than non-member towns for identical water. The member minimum on a 5/8 inch meter is $12.86 a month. The non-member minimum for the same meter is $14.80. Above the included 100 cubic feet, members pay $3.21 per hundred cubic feet for the next 2,900, then $3.13, then $2.76, then $1.59 at the top of the ladder. Non-members pay $3.72, then $3.62, then $3.16, then $1.84. There is also a low income rate, $3.02 monthly for members and $3.49 for non-members, which PWD lists on the same table and describes further on its customer assistance page.

PWD publishes its own typical-usage table, built on 60 gallons per person per day, and it is the fastest way to sanity-check a bill. For a member town, one person runs $16.07 a month, two $25.70, three $32.12, four $41.75, five $48.17, six $54.59. Add roughly 15 percent for a non-member town: four people there is $48.28.

Those are small numbers. Hold on to that, because the sewer table is where the money is.

A defect on that page, and why we are telling you about it

PWD's rate page contains three worked examples that no longer match the tables printed beside them, and if you use the examples to check your bill you will conclude you have been overcharged.

The member example says the first 100 cubic feet costs $11.49 and additional water runs $2.87 per hundred. The 2026 table directly above it says $12.86 and $3.21. The non-member example says $13.22 and $3.32 against a table reading $14.80 and $3.72. The wastewater example prices Portland sewer at $12.75 per hundred cubic feet against a table reading $13.00.

We did not have to guess which is right. Recompute the member example on the 2026 table and you get $12.86 plus four units at $3.21, or $25.70, which is exactly the figure PWD's own typical-usage table gives for a two-person household at five hundred cubic feet. Do the same for the non-member and wastewater examples and both land precisely on their typical-usage rows too. The tables are internally consistent. The three worked examples are leftovers from an older rate year that were not updated when the numbers were.

This is not a scandal and it is not costing anyone money. It is the ordinary way a public rate page decays, and it is worth knowing because the examples are the part of the page a normal person actually reads.

Sewer is the bigger bill, and it is set town by town

Here is the number that surprises people. In Portland, a four-person household pays $41.75 a month for water and $130.00 a month for sewer. Sewer is more than three times the water bill, and it is the line nobody researches before buying a house.

Sewer rates are set by each municipality, not by the district, which is why they diverge so sharply. These are the rates on PWD's municipal wastewater table, each shown with the effective date the district lists for it:

• Portland, effective 07/01/24: $13.00 minimum covering 1 HCF, then $13.00 per additional HCF
• Cumberland, effective 11/01/24: $41.84 minimum with no included usage, then $7.40 per HCF
• South Portland, effective 07/01/25: $7.38 minimum covering 1 HCF, then $7.38 per HCF
• Cape Elizabeth, effective 07/01/25: $56.79 minimum covering 1 HCF, then $6.52 per HCF
• Westbrook, effective 01/01/22: $12.73 minimum covering 1 HCF, then $7.73 per HCF
• Gorham, effective 04/01/23: $23.69 minimum covering 1 HCF, then $8.84 per HCF
• Windham, effective 03/01/24: $51.00 minimum covering 5 HCF, then $10.20 per HCF
• Falmouth, effective 07/01/25: $56.38 per residential living unit, flat

Now put a single four-person household through all of them. At 10 HCF a month, PWD's own comparison table gives: Portland $130.00, Cumberland $115.84, Cape Elizabeth $115.47, Gorham $103.25, Windham $102.00, Westbrook $82.30, South Portland $73.80.

Portland costs 76 percent more than South Portland for the same service across a bridge. That gap is larger than any difference in the water rate, larger than most differences in the electricity bill, and it compounds every month you own the house.

Falmouth deserves its own note because it is structurally different. Falmouth bills sewer at a flat $56.38 per residential living unit regardless of how much water you use. A family of six pays what a single person pays. If you use a lot of water, Falmouth's model is the cheapest arrangement in the region; if you live alone, it is among the most expensive per gallon.

Two of those effective dates are worth staring at. Westbrook's sewer rate is stamped January 1, 2022, and Gorham's April 1, 2023. Either those towns have genuinely held their rates for years, which would be unusual and admirable, or the table has not caught up. We are not going to guess which, and neither should you: PWD lists a named municipal contact and phone number for every one of these towns on the same page, and that is the call to make before you rely on a figure for a purchase decision.

Yarmouth, Freeport, and Brunswick are a different world

Yarmouth is served by the Yarmouth Water District, a quasi-municipal nonprofit chartered by the state in 1923. It runs four wells and 78.7 miles of main to more than 3,000 homes and businesses, with 349 public hydrants.

Its rates are structured quarterly and they are considerably higher than PWD's. The first 1,200 cubic feet per quarter costs $77.14, which works out to a $25.71 monthly minimum on a 5/8 inch meter with a 400 cubic foot allowance. Above that, the next 800 cubic feet per quarter run $6.31 per hundred, the next 10,000 run $4.14, and anything over 12,000 runs $2.40.

Run the same four-person household through it. At 1,000 cubic feet a month, or 3,000 a quarter, a Yarmouth customer pays $77.14 for the first 1,200, plus $50.48 for the next 800, plus $41.40 for the remaining 1,000. That is $169.02 a quarter, or about $56.34 a month, against $41.75 in a PWD member town. Yarmouth water costs roughly 35 percent more for the identical volume.

There is a wrinkle on the district's own site that you should know about before quoting any of this. Yarmouth's About page states that the district is below the state average for water rates, citing a Maine Public Utilities Commission average of $71.19 per quarter measured at exactly 1,200 cubic feet. The district's current rate at exactly 1,200 cubic feet is $77.14. Those two sentences cannot both describe today. The About page was last modified in February 2022 and cites 2021 production figures, so the likeliest explanation is simply that the benchmark is old while the rate is current. The rates page itself was updated in February 2026 and is the one to trust. Note also that the tariff document the page links to is named for a period running to January 1, 2026, so if you are making a decision on the margin, call and confirm.

Freeport is served by the Maine Water Company, and Freeport is the one town where we are going to decline to print a number. Maine Water is in the middle of consolidating ten separate rate divisions into a single unified statewide rate. The Public Utilities Commission approved the stipulation, transitional rates took effect February 1, 2026, and the ten divisions have been collapsed into five transitional groups that will keep adjusting through future rate filings until a uniform target is reached. The company's own announcement puts the immediate effect on a typical residential customer at 1,200 cubic feet per quarter somewhere between a $3.23 monthly reduction and a $4.94 monthly increase, depending on which division you started in. The agreement also creates a needs-based financial assistance rate under Maine's recent water affordability legislation.

Any Freeport figure you find online right now is a snapshot of a moving target. We have not verified a current Freeport residential tariff against Maine Water's own filing, so we are not publishing one. That is the honest position and we would rather hold the space than fill it.

Brunswick and Topsham are served by the Brunswick and Topsham Water District, established in 1903 and drawing from groundwater rather than a surface reservoir. It sits at the outer edge of our coverage area and we have not yet put its schedule through the same read.

What to actually do about it

If you are buying, ask for twelve months of actual water and sewer bills the same way you would ask for heating records. The seller has them. The spread between Portland and South Portland sewer is close to $700 a year on a four-person household, which is real money that no listing sheet mentions.

If you are renting, find out whether water and sewer are in the rent before you sign. In much of Portland's multifamily stock they are, and in much of the surrounding suburbs they are not.

If you are already here and your bill looks wrong, check it against the utility's typical-usage table rather than its worked examples, for the reasons above. And if the number still looks wrong, a bill that jumps without a lifestyle change is very often a running toilet, which is the single most common cause of a surprise water bill anywhere.

For the rest of the arithmetic of living here, our Portland cost of living guide has the household numbers, property taxes by town covers the largest recurring line, and the electricity supplier guide covers the utility bill people actually get sold on. If you are still choosing a town, moving to Portland and moving to Falmouth go through the tradeoffs.

FAQ

Who provides water in Greater Portland, Maine?

The Portland Water District serves 11 communities: it delivers water to Falmouth, Raymond, Scarborough, South Portland, Standish, and Windham, and provides both water and wastewater service to Cape Elizabeth, Cumberland, Gorham, Portland, and Westbrook. Yarmouth is served by the Yarmouth Water District, Freeport by the Maine Water Company, and Brunswick and Topsham by the Brunswick and Topsham Water District.

How much is a typical water bill in Portland, Maine?

Using the Portland Water District's own typical-usage table, effective January 1, 2026, a four-person household in a member town pays $41.75 a month for water. One person pays $16.07, two pay $25.70, and six pay $54.59. Non-member towns pay roughly 15 percent more, so four people there costs $48.28.

Why is my sewer bill higher than my water bill?

Because sewer rates are set by your municipality, not by the water district, and they are generally higher. A four-person Portland household pays $41.75 a month for water and $130.00 for sewer, more than three times as much. Sewer is the larger of the two bills in every Portland Water District town.

Which Greater Portland town has the cheapest sewer?

Of the towns on the Portland Water District's municipal wastewater table, South Portland is the cheapest at $73.80 a month for a four-person household, and Portland is the most expensive at $130.00. That is a 76 percent spread for the same service. Falmouth is a separate case: it charges a flat $56.38 per residential living unit regardless of usage.

Is Yarmouth water more expensive than Portland water?

Yes, by roughly 35 percent at the same volume. A household using 1,000 cubic feet a month pays about $56.34 in Yarmouth against $41.75 in a Portland Water District member town, calculated from each utility's published 2026 rate schedule.

Do I have to pay for water if I have a well?

No. Households on private wells and septic systems inside Portland Water District towns receive no water or sewer bill. Being inside a served town does not mean your address is connected, and the district's service area map rather than the town boundary is what determines it.

Are the Portland Water District's published rate examples accurate?

The rate tables are accurate and internally consistent. The three worked examples printed alongside them are not: they use prices from an earlier rate year, showing $11.49 and $2.87 for members, $13.22 and $3.32 for non-members, and $12.75 for Portland wastewater, against current table values of $12.86 and $3.21, $14.80 and $3.72, and $13.00. Check a bill against the typical-usage tables instead.