Water pours from a faucet on the 12th floor of the SFPUC building in San Francisco. The agency is planning to raise water and sewer rates to cover higher infrastructure costs.
Paul Kuroda/For the S.F. Chronicle
The SFPUC’s Southeast Treatment Plant in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood is scheduled for upgrades to meet new regulatory requirements.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park provides the majority of water for San Francisco.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle
Sprinklers water a residential yard in the Bay Area.
Michael Short/For the S.F. Chronicle
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is planning an increase in water and sewer rates, beginning this summer, which would push up household utility bills by nearly 25% over the next two years.
Paul Chinn/The Chronicle
San Francisco is planning to sharply raise water and sewer rates over the coming decade, beginning with a nearly 25% projected bump in residential bills over the next two years, as the growing cost of maintaining the city’s waterworks comes due.
This summer, the average single-family household bill for combined water and sewer service will increase from $171 a month to $189 a month, and next summer it will rise to $212 a month, according to estimates in the rate-hike proposal scheduled for approval next week.
Officials expect that utility rates will continue to climb through at least 2036, though at varying levels.
Article continues below this ad
San Francisco residents generally pay slightly more for water and sewer operations than those served by other big Bay Area providers, which has some people pushing back against the planned increases. However, no community in the region is immune to cost spikes, and many utilities have been asking customers to pay more.
“Yes, this is higher than inflation,” said Laura Busch, deputy chief financial officer for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, at a recent presentation on the proposed utility rate changes. “But the costs of running our system are going up much faster than inflation, too, and we don’t have anyone else to cover these costs other than our ratepayers.”
San Francisco Chronicle Logo
Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.
Add Preferred Source
Aging infrastructure and system upgrades are the biggest drivers of the escalating expenditures. The SFPUC has a 10-year capital budget of more than $9 billion, mostly for improvements to wastewater facilities, such as the Southeast Treatment Plant in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, which handles 80% of the city’s sewer water.
Smaller, yet significant outlays are going toward water supply projects, including repairs to the 19-mile Mountain Tunnel and replacement of the century-old Moccasin Penstocks, both of which are in the Sierra Nevada and are critical for San Francisco’s long-distance water deliveries.
Article continues below this ad
San Francisco’s water system consists of a sprawling network of reservoirs and pipelines that brings supplies from the mountains in and around Yosemite National Park to the Bay Area. Beneath the city, 1,900 miles of sewer mains and laterals cart off both sewage and stormwater.
City officials cite new regulatory requirements, namely for treated wastewater to carry less nitrogen into San Francisco Bay, and less federal funding for sharpening the financial strain.
The SFPUC’s water, in addition to serving San Francisco, goes to about two dozen wholesalers in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda counties. The water rate for these suppliers is set to increase 7.4% this summer, compared to a 2.3% rise last year. Some of the communities buying the water will pass the increase directly to residents and businesses while others, which may have several sources of water, will likely base any rate adjustments on the totality of their supply costs.
Tom Smegal, chief executive officer and general manager of the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency, which represents the SFPUC’s wholesale customers, said higher rates aren’t “making everyone happy.” But he also said most are pleased to have an enduring, high quality water source.
Some San Francisco residents aren’t as complacent. Recent SFPUC meetings have drawn a handful of people worried that higher rates, on top of rising prices of groceries, gasoline and other essentials, will be tough to manage.
Article continues below this ad
SFPUC officials have pointed customers to the agency’s Customer Assistance Program, which offers discounts for needy residents, and free “Water-Wise” evaluations that help households find ways to cut water use, and hence their bills.
At least two environmental groups are calling on the SFPUC to go further. The Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay chapter and the Yosemite Rivers Alliance, formerly Tuolumne River Trust, want the agency to re-evaluate its water supply needs, believing the city has long overestimated its demand and consequently overbuilt its infrastructure.
The main goal of the groups is conserving water, particularly in the Tuolumne River basin, where the water diversions of San Francisco and others have put pressure on struggling salmon runs. But the critics say if the city were to scale back its water supply plans, capital costs would ultimately drop and so would bills.
“Rates are skyrocketing, and they could go up even more if the SFPUC keeps building,” said Peter Drekmeier, policy director of the Yosemite Rivers Alliance. “The first rule for getting out of a hole is to stop digging. We can take action now to prevent future mistakes that are even bigger.”
The Yosemite Rivers Alliance and Sierra Club have asked the SFPUC to downgrade a worst-case water scenario that it plans for — a severe drought lasting roughly 8 years — arguing that this event is highly improbable and requires amassing too much water.
Article continues below this ad
The SFPUC has defended its conservative planning as a prudent approach to ensuring a continuous water supply for 2.7 million people and the Bay Area’s robust economy, while at the same time balancing environmental concerns.
“It is our responsibility to continue to maintain and upgrade the systems that people rely on every day for clean tap water and flushing toilets,” said John Cote, spokesperson for the SFPUC. “With all due respect, it will be the SFPUC, not an outside group, that would have to answer to the residents and businesses of the Bay Area if we didn’t follow the science and our hard-learned experience to make decisions.”
SFPUC officials acknowledge that future rate increases won’t be easy for everyone, but they say customers are still getting great value. The agency’s governing board is scheduled to vote on the new rates at its regular meeting Tuesday.
Under the plan, starting July 1, residential water rates would increase 7% (both the fixed charge for service and the charge for the volume of water used) while residential sewer rates would increase 15% (both the fixed charge and, on average, the volumetric charge). On July 1, 2027, water rates would similarly increase 7% while sewer rates would increase 14.5%.
For comparison, the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which serves 1.4 million people in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, is set to raise water rates 6.5% and sewer rates 8.5% in July.
Article continues below this ad
That increase, which follows the same level of increase last July, will push the average single-family household bill for water and sewer service in the East Bay to about $135 a month, according to the district. This does not include an additional annual wastewater charge EBMUD collects on property tax bills, which equates to about $15 a month.
Comparisons between water bills at different agencies are difficult because the calculations involve, among other things, different amounts of water. In San Francisco, residents generally use far less water than most other areas because of smaller parcels and lack of lawns and landscaping; this keeps bills down despite generally higher rates.
San Jose Water, which serves a little more than 1 million people in the South Bay, reports that its average household water bill is $144 a month, though that reflects more than twice as much water consumption as the average San Francisco water bill. The San Jose Water bill doesn’t include sewer service.
Further increases to SFPUC rates over the next decade will cover not only capital projects and the accompanying debt service but account for lower water sales, given better customer efficiency, and higher operational costs, including increasing employee salaries.
“Utilities across the country face the same need to repair and replace aging systems, many of which were built decades ago with federal dollars,” said Cote, with the SFPUC. “Now, there is little federal help. Utilities find themselves largely on their own to make needed investments to systems that people rely on every day. San Francisco is tackling the problem head on before it becomes even more expensive.”