They keep a bucket in the shower to put on the garden.

They wash their dishes in the sink and only use the dishwasher on rare occasions.

The fine print on their water bills shows their water consumption is just 35 per cent of the household average.

Yet the Grabaus have just had their Hunter Water bill rise from $117.71 to $189.60, and like others who have written to The Herald on the issue, they blame Tillegra Dam for the extra impost.

"Our pensioner rebate has gone up, and that's something, but when water use is only about 20 per cent of the total bill, you have to wonder what's happened to their 'user pays' system," Mr Grabau said yesterday.

Newcastle retiree Wilton Ainsworth, a former head of Comsteel and former chairman of the state-owned Newcastle Port Corporation, likened Hunter Water's new charges to Telstra lifting the price of telephone rental as it lost earnings to mobile phone companies.

"You can change phone companies but you're stuck with Hunter Water," Mr Ainsworth said yesterday.

"I'm not struggling, obviously, but the water bill for our 10 apartments has risen by 45 per cent when measured by the amount of water used."

The new charges were announced in July by the state-run Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, which said it had granted about half of what Hunter Water had wanted.

The tribunal said the increase was about 30 per cent over four years.

A typical Hunter bill would go from $718 a year to $817 in 2009-10, $857 in 2010-11, $897 in 2011-12 and $939 in 2012-13.

Hunter Water managing director Kevin Young said Tillegra accounted for just 8 per cent of this year's rise and 15 per cent by 2012-13.

Mr Young said he appreciated that any increase was "difficult, especially for pensioners".

He said the State Government had lifted the pensioner rebate by $37 to $212, meaning it would cover nearly one-third of a typical pensioner bill.