Residents from Wake County and outlying areas made an impassioned plea Monday evening to the N.C. Utilities Commission not to allow Aqua North Carolina to raise their water and sewer rates for the second time in three years.

About two dozen people listened more than two hours to public comments challenging the rate request by Aqua, the state's largest private water utility. Aqua charges more than $100 a month for a typical residential customer in North Carolina, about twice the monthly bill charged by Raleigh, Charlotte and other municipal water departments.

The Cary-based company, with 88,00 water and sewer customers in the state, is seeking to raise bills by 20.4 percent for water service and 16.4 percent for sewer service, which would come to about $17 a month extra for a typical residential customer.

"It has gotten to the point where we don't water our lawn, we don't wash our car," Juli Williams, an Aqua customer who lives in Mallard Crossing in Raleigh, told the utilities commission. "I personally go bananas if my 10-year-old wants to fill a water gun in the summer. That's a personal story of how we have to live because of these water bills."

Several hundred protesters are expected in downtown Raleigh this evening to object to their water and sewer bills.

The placard-carriers will be objecting a proposed rate increase by Aqua North Carolina, a private utility that serves communities without municipal water/sewer hookups.

Dozens are expected to attend a public hearing on Aqua's proposed rate hike, to be argued before the N.C. Utilities Commission in the Dobbs Building at 430 Salisbury Street. About a hundred plan to demonstrate outdoors near the commission's office, said organizer Juli Williams, an Aqua customer who lives in the Mallard Crossing community in north Raleigh.

North Carolina residents will have seven opportunities to tell state regulators what they think of proposed rate increases by Aqua North Carolina, a private water and sewer service.

The company, with 88,000 customers in the state and nearly 1 million nationwide, is asking for rate hikes averaging about 19 percent. This is the second rate increase for Aqua in the past three years.

The N.C. Utilities Commission, which will review the rate request, has scheduled six public meetings across the state in April and a public hearing in Raleigh in June.

Aqua's move has roiled homeowners who already pay the company about $100 for typical monthly usage, twice as much as residents of Raleigh, Charlotte and other municipal utility departments.