Boost Sewer Charges

Spending money to upgrade the sewage system is the public equivalent of buying new tires for the family car--common sense and a concern for your own welfare tell you it has to be done occasionally, but there are a lot of other places you’d rather spend your money.

In recent years, the City of San Diego has seen its sewage problems become more and more difficult to handle and potentially more and more expensive. With parts of Mission Bay frequently closed by sewage spills, with the sewage pipes in the city’s interior becoming old and overburdened, with the disastrous inadequacies of Pump Station 64, and with the City Council’s decision to spend as much as $1 billion upgrading the Point Loma treatment plant, the city’s sewage system increasingly resembles threadbare tires. Money is going to have to be spent.

City Manager John Lockwood has proposed that sewer rates be increased to bring in 60% more revenue as a first step toward meeting the sewage challenge. That, with other fee increases, would generate nearly $25 million next year to begin desperately needed projects, such as replacing pipes in the older parts of town, protecting Mission Bay and remedying the inadequacies of Pump Station 64 in Sorrento Valley. That does not include most of the city’s share of bringing the Point Loma plant into compliance with federal law by converting it to secondary treatment.

But a City Council committee was unwilling to accept the proposal, which would have raised the typical single-family residential sewer bill from $16 every two months to $25.60, and asked Lockwood to rethink the proposal. The City Council members are as aware as anyone of the need to modernize the system, but they are concerned that it be done equitably, and Lockwood’s plan would have raised the rates of some heavy water users more than 100%.

The reality is that the rates must be raised. San Diego residents have been living on borrowed time in terms of the sewer rates they have been paying, which have generally been lower than those of most other cities. Even within the county, the city has the 11th-highest rate, with its $8 a month being well behind the $30 a month some customers of the Otay Municipal Water District pay and the $19.70 monthly bills in Del Mar.

The City Council should approve the proposed increases and should have no trepidation in doing so.