Water Rates: Drip, drip, water torture

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Water Rates: Drip, drip, water torture

May 21, 2023

The SF Comicle is giving us the unfortunate preview of coming water rate increases. Reporter Kurtis Alexander's piece titled "Storms replenished California’s reservoirs. So why are Bay Area water bills about to soar?" brings the bad news into focus:

The SFPUC, which directly serves nearly 900,000 people in San Francisco (Ed: and most of the Peninsula including B'game), is scheduled to vote on its higher water and sewer rates Tuesday. Under the proposal, both the fixed base rate and the amount charged for the volume of water used, or discharged in the case of wastewater, will rise, resulting in an average 8.3% annual increase over three years for single-family households…or a cumulative 27% increase.

“We get this question a lot: Why raise rates if we have this abundance of water?” said Christopher Tritto, a spokesperson for EBMUD. “Well, what we’re really paying for is all of the infrastructure to store the water, to transport it to the Bay Area and to distribute it. … The water we get from the rain and snow is essentially free.”

“Even with these proposed rate increases, our services are a tremendous value,” said John Coté, spokesperson for the SFPUC. “One gallon of our world-class tap water would cost only 2 cents, while a gallon of bottled water costs $1.79 on average. Our services are also competitive with our peers.” The agency did not raise rates last year. Over the previous four years, rates rose an average of 8% annually.

Get your calculator or spreadsheet out, add in the coming sewer rate increases we wrote about in October 2021 here and revise household budget accordingly. The other front-page article in today's Chronicle was about the impending transit system "doom loop" being nearer than believed. The sad thing is anyone could see that the "doom loop" started the day we went into Covid lockdown; when the managements of all these systems stuck their head in the sand and stuck out their hands for $4.5 billion of federal "aid" to keep empty trains and buses running. Now they want more even though BART ridership, for example, is still 60% down from pre-Covid.

If the trade-off is water system reliability vs. 95% empty SamTrans buses running up and down El Camino–and it might just be given the $31.5 billion and growing budget deficit–I'll take water reliability for $500, Alex.

Posted in City Finances, SamTrans-Caltrain, Water

2 responses to “Water Rates: Drip, drip, water torture”

Joe

May 24, 2023

B’game native Peter Hartlaub continues to contribute interesting pieces at the SF Comicle. Nolte, King and Hartlaub might be the only ones not in the Sporting Green worth reading on a regular basis. Hartlaub has a knack for catching historical events and anniversaries like this one today:
Today, we take for granted the creation of the O’Shaughnessy Dam and Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which began filling with water meant for San Francisco taps on May 24, 1923. Since the greater 160-mile waterway project was finished in 1934, crystal clear water from the Sierra has arrived in city faucets as if by magic.
In fact, the journey to Hetch Hetchy’s transformation was both an engineering marvel and a bureaucratic nightmare, and Muir and the dam’s namesake, Michael O’Shaughnessy, were both dead by the time water finally arrived in 1934 at the Pulgas Water Temple in Redwood City — a domed monument that marks the “finish line” for the project.
The pro-Sierra forces had the perfect mayor in “Sunny Jim” Rolph, who served San Francisco for 19 years from 1912 until 1931 (when he became governor of California). After decades of corruption — including one mayor who was jailed — Rolph put a priority on infrastructure, building the current City Hall, half the city’s police stations and miles of municipal railway in San Francisco. (Ed: Imagine that. An SF mayor interested in “infrastructure”!
Beyond the 341-foot-tall dam, which was 150 feet wide at the base, workers spent 11 more years building 160 miles of tunnels, pipes and aqueducts, with two power stations to convert the water to electricity along the way and four pipelines underneath the San Francisco Bay — more than four decades before BART installed its Transbay Tubes. The total cost to the city was $100 million, almost $2.6 billion in 2023 dollars.
But the finished product was a stunning feat, bringing 300 million gallons of water per day to the Bay Area, entirely by gravity without a single pump. Each drop takes five days to make the journey.
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There’s a lot more in the piece and some great vintage photos here: https://www.sfchronicle.com/oursf/article/hetch-hetchy-reservoir-san-francisco-miracle-18105507.php
Joe

June 2, 2023

WOW. Check out this drumbeat of price increases in San Jose:
Over a tenth of San Jose’s population may soon see their water bills significantly jump if councilmembers approve an increase on Tuesday, making it one of the largest rate hikes in the Bay Area this coming year.
Customers of the city-operated San Jose Municipal Water System (SJMWS), which serves approximately 140,000 city residents, could see a 14% rise in their monthly water bills — roughly $16 extra per month. Price increases will go into effect July 1 if the San Jose City Council gives the thumbs up.
Officials blame the cost bump on increasing charges by third-party groups who dispense the water, drought-related impacts on supply and usage, and infrastructure improvements that need to be completed. The city-run system serves customers in North San Jose, Alviso, Evergreen, Edenvale and Coyote Valley.
Despite the rise in prices, water usage is not expected to change in the coming year, officials said. The SJMWS is expecting to bring in an additional $8.9 million from the adjustment.
SJMWS also expects further bill increases in the years ahead, with a minimum 15% jump in 2024, 11.5% in 2025 and then seven years of 10% increases. However, if drought conditions worsen, the numbers could increase even more.
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That’s a 110.5% increase in a decade not counting the compounding effect of working in percentages!

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