As Peachtree City’s Water and Sewer Authority ends the year with a projected shortfall of $294,000, customers will see another 5 percent increase added to their sewer bills starting this month.

The increase will result in a $1.50 hike on the monthly sewer bill of the average residential customer.

In the past few years, the authority has lost its largest industrial sewer customer, Photocircuits, and also has seen declining revenues due to the drought restrictions placed on outdoor watering in Fayette County.

The drought restrictions have been eased in recent months, but it was not enough to prevent the authority from ending this year in a shortfall despite reducing expenses by over $100,000.

The city’s sewer bills are calculated by the amount of gallons of water used by a given building. Thus outdoor watering adds to individual sewer bills even though little if any of the outdoor water ever gets into the sewer system.

WASA Monday night unanimously approved its $6.76 million budget for the coming fiscal year, a hike of 4.78 percent over last year’s approved budget of $6.45 million.

The 5 percent increase is the second phase of a 10 percent increase approved by the WASA board in November. The first increase was applied to December bills. Prior to that, sewer rates hadn’t been raised for six years, officials said.