City’s Sewer Rates Ordered Up by 30%, to $10.40 Monthly

Sewer bills for San Diego homeowners will increase immediately by 30%--to $10.40 a month--as a result of a unanimous decision Monday by the City Council.

The rate hike will be followed by another 30% increase next year, which would raise bills to $12.80 each month.

The City Council rejected an immediate 60% increase, as proposed by the city manager’s office. The reason for the council’s decision, according to Mayor Maureen O’Connor, is that the state Water Resources Control Board has indicated it will provide the bulk of funding for two sewage projects the rate hike was supposed to cover.

But a spokeswoman for the state Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento said Monday that the board has not made any commitments, and has only told the mayor that it will carefully review the city’s request for about $28 million in grants.

Will Consider Request

The water board will consider the city’s request at its meetings next month and in September. “The board hasn’t made any commitments on that funding . . . there haven’t been any promises made. Five votes are needed” to gain approval, said Sandra Salazar, a water board spokeswoman who noted she had talked to W. Don Maughan, chairman of the water board.

Maughan met with O’Connor and a contingent of City Council members last week. It was during that meeting, according to O’Connor, that she received strong indications that the state would look favorably at providing the city with the $28 million.

The money--coming from combined state and federal revenues--would be used to pay for about $9 million of $10 million worth of preliminary studies for a proposed $1 billion-plus secondary sewage treatment facility.

The rest of the funding, adding up to about $19 million, would be used to help construct a large pipe in the Tijuana River Valley, where problems of raw sewage spilled from Mexico and running down the river have been chronic. The pipe, part of a combined $60 million federal, state and local effort, would collect the sewage and return it to Tijuana.

It’s clear, however, given San Diego’s deteriorating sewer system and the federal government’s requirement that the city improve its method of treating sewage, that even though the City Council has provided homeowners a temporary cushion by employing a two-stage rate increase of 60%, this is only the beginning of higher bills.

‘It’s Going to Be Costly’

“We all understand we have a sewer problem in this city and we’re going to have to meet it . . . and it’s going to be costly,” said O’Connor, noting that the city’s residential sewer bills are significantly below the statewide average and will have to rise.

As part of the City Council’s decision, fees charged developers to hook up to the sewage system were also increased by 30%, to $1,483 for each new housing unit. The city manager had proposed raising the fees by 20%, to $1,370.

Additionally, the City Council spurned the city manager’s recommendation, which would have changed the way owners of single-family homes would be billed. The manager wanted to base sewer fees on the amount of water usage--as is now done with apartments and condominiums, as well as with commercial and industrial facilities.

But the City Council spurned that idea and kept intact the system of monthly flat rates for single-family homeowners, a structure that has remained the same since 1957.