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# City water prices are on the rise
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-water-prices-are-on-the-rise/
- Published: 2008-07-12T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:09:31.000Z
- Author: Melody Hanatani
- Tags: Government & Politics, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Apartment owners call new water rates unfair*

CITY HALL The price of watering the lawn is about to become more expensive.

Property owners can expect to see changes in their water and wastewater bills starting in the fall after the City Council ear-lier this week enacted higher utility rates in order to stabilize rapidly depleting reserves of funding that have been impacted by rising equipment, labor and material costs.

The rate schedule has been met with opposition by property owners, decrying the increases during a time when residents are already facing financial challenges with rising gasoline and food prices.

The new five-year rate schedule is the first noticeable increase passed onto customers since the council adopted a 6 percent hike in 2005, which included a Consumer Price Index (CPI) adjustment. The only other significant raise in recent memory occurred in 1996\. While the rate increases in some years could reach double figures, including up to 18 percent for wastewater and 11 percent for water this year, the average over a 17-year-period ending in 2013 — the final year in the new schedule — should end up being moderate, according to Leon Swain, the director of Environmental and Public Works. The schedule represents the maximum rates that City Hall can impose during the given year, meaning that the actual increase reflected in the bill could be less than the ceiling approved by the council.

The reason for the 17-year average rate increase — projected at 4.8 percent for water and 5.2 percent for wastewater — is the lack of sizable changes in the past.

“If you look at the 17-year period, the rate increases are fairly reasonable given the increased costs of electricity, fuel, material cost and even a lot of new regulations that have been implemented that weren’t necessarily there years ago,” Swain said.

Such projections hasn’t eased the concerns of residents who fear the financial burden that could come with the steep increases in the next few years.

City Hall received approximately 280 letters protesting the rate changes during the eight-week comment period from May to mid-July, representing slightly more than one percent of the 12,000 property owners who received a notification. A majority protest would have delayed council action.

Among the opponents were apartment owners who in many cases bear the cost of water usage by their tenants.

“I found it outrageous we have no control over what (renters) use yet we are the ones who are going to be charged for it,” Carissa Drucker, an apartment owner, said during a public hearing on Tuesday. “You are putting this hike among a lot of people who have no control over what is being used on their properties.”

Several residents have mentioned the ongoing fluoridation issue, pointing out that City Hall should defer the rate increase and instead save money by removing fluoride from the water. City Hall began delivering fluoridated water beginning in November 2007\. “We find it particularly unconscionable you would seek a rate hike on the very water that you have contaminated with fluoride against our will,” Doris Stegall, a resident of the Montana Avenue area, said during the hearing.“We see no moral reason to justify a hike to pay for more water we don’t even want.”

City officials say the rate adjustments are necessary in order to protect dwindling reserve funds, which have been slowly draining as expenses continue to outpace revenues. With the exception of the 6 percent increase in 2005, rates have only been adjusted to mirror the CPI since it was added to the formula in 1999.

“We faced all of these cost pressures and the reality is that the nature of the CPI increase just wasn’t keeping pace with the pace of the other cost challenges that we faced,” Water Resources Manager Gil Borboa said.

Following a series of discussions with the council in 2005, City Hall launched a rate study in 2007, which led to the new schedule and pricing method for water and wastewater.

The new structure will bill customers based on consumption, rather than the old method which charged a fixed rate based on the size of the meter. The goal is to promote water conservation.

The average single family currently uses approximately 3,500 cubic feet per billing cycle, which includes two months, translating into a water bill of roughly $75.37\. Under the new structure, the average single family will end up paying about 50 cents less.

In fact many property owners can expect to pay less, particularly in the first year, thanks to the new structure.

“The customer will have a direct impact on the bill,”Borboa said.“They can reduce the bill by reducing water consumption.”

The new structure for water splits customers into four tiers, starting from the lowest consumers to the highest. Low-income residents in the first three tiers could receive rate discounts.

The discount is available to customers who qualify for low-income programs with Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas and City Hall. About 180 customers currently qualify for the low-income program, Borboa said.

Low-income customers would pay roughly 41 percent less than regular rate payers under the first tier, the gap closing through the higher tiers.

The council opted to extend the low-income program to only the first three tiers, excluding the fourth tier which includes property owners with perhaps the largest landscaping area to water. City staff originally proposed a program that encompassed all tiers.

Qualifying low-income property owners will also receive a flat discount for wastewater rates, which isn’t based on a tiered system.

“On principal, I don’t view the equity principal going across the … highest use category,” Councilmember Bobby Shriver said before the council adopted the rates.“I think there is equity at some levels and equity goes away as it becomes the high user.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 12, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/071208.pdf?ref=smdp.com)