The San Diego City Council on Tuesday is set to consider a new structure of water rates that would lower bills for apartment buildings but increase them for most single-family homes.<\/p>\n
The proposal is intended to bring the city into compliance with Proposition 218, a voter initiative from 1996 that regulates fees charged by local governments, including fees for water service.<\/p>\n
In 2015, a group of water customers sued San Diego arguing the city’s tiered rate structure for single-family homes violated Prop 218, which requires water agencies to charge customers no more than their proportional cost of the service.<\/p>\n
The city argued the higher rates charged to the heaviest water users were a lawful way to incentivize conservation. But the courts sided with the plaintiffs, finding the city had not presented enough evidence to justify its tiered water rates.<\/p>\n
San Diego charges a flat monthly water service fee as well as a “volumetric” charge that’s based on water usage.<\/p>\n
San Diego currently has seven different volumetric rates for different kinds of customers. Single-family homes are divided into three tiers \u2014 for low, average and high users \u2014 while separate rates are charged to apartment buildings, businesses, irrigation customers and temporary construction sites.<\/p>\n
Under the new rate structure, all water customers would be charged the same volumetric rate<\/a> \u2014 $11.09 per hundred cubic feet, equivalent to about 748 gallons. The fixed monthly charge would continue to vary based on the size of the customer’s water meter.<\/p>\n The city estimates<\/a> the new “unitary” rate would result in apartment buildings saving between 2.2% and 2.6% on the average water bill. Single-family homes in the heaviest usage tier would see savings of around 5.9%, while irrigation customers would save around 6.7%.<\/p>\n Single-family homes in the lowest usage tier can expect to see bills increase by 7.1%. Those in the average usage tier can expect bills to go up by about 5.9%.<\/p>\n Last year the council approved<\/a> across-the-board water rate increases of 14.7% in 2026 and 14.5% in 2027 to account for rising water purchasing costs and the rising cost of San Diego’s under-construction water recycling infrastructure<\/a>. The increase planned for 2027 would still take effect, but be adjusted to transition to the unitary rate structure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Diego City Council on Tuesday is set to consider a new structure of water rates that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-487346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487346","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=487346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}