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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\u2019s sewer water.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s long-distance water deliveries.<\/p>\n
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San Francisco\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The SFPUC\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Tom Smegal, chief executive officer and general manager of the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency, which represents the SFPUC\u2019s wholesale customers, said higher rates aren\u2019t \u201cmaking everyone happy.\u201d But he also said most are pleased to have an enduring, high quality water source.<\/p>\n
Some San Francisco residents aren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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SFPUC officials have pointed customers to the agency\u2019s Customer Assistance Program, which offers discounts for needy residents, and free \u201cWater-Wise\u201d evaluations that help households find ways to cut water use, and hence their bills.<\/p>\n
At least two environmental groups are calling on the SFPUC to go further. The Sierra Club\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cRates are skyrocketing, and they could go up even more if the SFPUC keeps building,\u201d said Peter Drekmeier, policy director of the Yosemite Rivers Alliance. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Yosemite Rivers Alliance and Sierra Club have asked the SFPUC to downgrade a worst-case water scenario that it plans for\u00a0\u2014 a severe drought lasting roughly 8 years\u00a0\u2014 arguing that this event is highly improbable and requires amassing too much water.<\/p>\n
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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\u2019s robust economy, while at the same time balancing environmental concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is our responsibility to continue to maintain and upgrade the systems that people rely on every day for clean tap water and flushing toilets,\u201d said John Cote, spokesperson for the SFPUC.\u00a0\u201cWith all due respect, it will be the\u00a0SFPUC, not an outside group, that would have to answer to the residents and businesses of the Bay Area if we didn\u2019t follow the science and our hard-learned experience to make decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
SFPUC officials acknowledge that future rate increases won\u2019t be easy for everyone, but they say customers are still getting great value. The agency\u2019s governing board is scheduled to vote on the new rates at its regular meeting Tuesday.<\/p>\n
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%.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t include sewer service.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cUtilities across the country face the same need to repair and replace aging systems, many of which were built decades ago with federal dollars,\u201d said Cote, with the SFPUC. \u201cNow, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Water pours from a faucet on the 12th floor of the\u00a0SFPUC building in San Francisco. The agency is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[184,642,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-285441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-drought","10":"tag-san-francisco","11":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","12":"tag-san-francisco-news","13":"tag-sf","14":"tag-sf-headlines","15":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}