Santa Rosa considers steep water, sewer rate hikes
Published: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 6:27 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 6:27 p.m.
When Santa Rosa residents and business owners open their city utility bills in January, they’ll likely see an 8 percent increase in water rates and a 7 percent hike in sewer rates.
And when they open those same bills in January 2011, they’ll see a second round of identical increases.
“These are hard numbers to swallow and hard news to hear,” said Robin Swinth, a member of the city’s Board of Public Utilities, which will take up the rate increase at 1:30 p.m. today at City Hall.
Two issues are fueling the steep rate hikes: substantial increases in the wholesale water rates charged by the supplier, the Sonoma County Water Agency, and the huge success of emergency water conservation measures, which results in plummeting revenues to support the city water distribution system.
Though water rates could go up more than 16 percent over two years, not every customer will face the same increase. Jennifer Burke, the city’s water resources planner, said anyone who uses water for outdoor irrigation is likely to be hit hardest.
Under a revised tier system, those who use the same amount of water in summer as they do in winter — a time when most water use is confined to indoor uses — will see their usage rate increase only 4 percent each year.
Those who need more water in summer then what they use in winter — mainly for irrigating for lawns, gardens and landscaping — will see their use rates jump by 20 percent a year for the extra water they use.
Currently, the lowest monthly rate is set aside for those whose use does not exceed their winter monthly use, plus an 8,000-gallon monthly cushion for summer irrigation.
Should the utilities board recommend the rate increases following Thursday’s hearing, the city council would consider adopting them Dec. 1. If that occurs, they would become effective in January.
The average Santa Rosa household already pays a combined water and sewer bill that exceeds $100 a month.
For the past few years the average Santa Rosa homeowner’s monthly sewer bill has ranked among the highest in the state, primarily because of regulatory wastewater standards imposed on the North Coast region and operation of The Geysers wastewater-to-electricity disposal system.
The sewer and water rate increases are needed, board members were told, because of a near standstill in residential and commercial development that has cost the city millions of dollars in connection fees it counted on as part of balancing utility budgets.
The forces pushing up water prices extend beyond the city to the
The agency in July raised the cost of water its sells to its county customers, including Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Petaluma, Windsor and Sonoma, by 20 percent.
That’s well above the 3 percent annual increases Santa Rosa and the other cities contracting for the Russian River water had been used to seeing.
Utility board Member Teejay Lowe said much of that unusual increase was driven by “the regulatory environment,” a reference to a state Water Resources Board order earlier this year that the Water Agency reduce its pumping from the Russian River by 25 percent. The cut was required to ensure enough water remained in Lake Mendocino to provide flows for the upstream fall run of endangered salmon.
The order also resulted in Santa Rosa’s City Council passing a resolution in February asking residents to voluntarily cut water use by 15 percent through Oct. 2, the day the state’s order expires.
City records indicate residents have complied.
From April through, Santa Rosa bought 3.2 billion gallons from the Water Agency compared to 3.7 billion gallons for the same period in 2008.
“Bless our ratepayers for doing it voluntarily, but there is a price to pay for that,” said Santa Rosa Utilities Director Miles Ferris.
Ferris said the state order, coupled with conservation efforts by Santa Rosa water users, resulted in substantially lower water sales. That has meant reduced revenue needed to fund on-going water operations.
The city paid the county Water Agency $9.6 million for the 6.7 billion gallons it bought between July 1, 2008, and this past June 30, a flow 700 million gallons lower than the year before.
That was when the agency was charging $471 an acre feet, or about 326,000 gallons. The new charge as of this past July is $565.
Ferris agreed that raising rates when residents voluntarily stepped forward to save water likely will generate some anger among ratepayers. But he said there is little choice.
“Even if we only delivered one drop of water, we still have certain fixed costs,” he said. “We still have to pay off the machinery, pipes still have to be replaced and certain other things have to be done.”
“The less water we sell the more we have to charge to pay those fixed costs,” he said.
Administrative Services Officer Linda Reed, who helped compile the city’s water and sewer rate study, said the county’s 20 percent wholesale increase translates to about 6.7 percent of the 16 percent water rate increase being proposed in Santa Rosa over the next two years.
Those higher rates still won’t be enough to cover the costs of the city water system so the water department is looking at reducing water purchases by 700 million gallons more a year, freezing jobs and reducing existing budgets to keep from having to seek more than the dual 8 percent increases proposed, she said.
The combination of cost reductions and revenue increases “does push the pain out another year a little bit,” she said.
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