Analysts Hike Estimate for Sewer Repairs by $1 Billion

People gasped at the price tag two years ago--$2.3 billion to modernize, rebuild and otherwise bring Los Angeles city sewers into condition for the 1990s and beyond.

But sometime today, financial analysts will sit down before the City Council and explain that things have changed. The cost is actually higher by about, oh, a billion or so--for a total of $3.4 billion--and Los Angeles residents will likely pay higher water bills for the rest of this century.

Even for a city the size of Los Angeles, the tab is staggering. The $1.1-billion jump in the cost of repairing the ill-maintained sewer system by itself is more than a third of the entire city budget for a year.

Greater Damage

The cost has gone up, Chief Administrative Officer Keith Comrie said, in part because city engineers have discovered there is more wrong with the sewer system than first believed. The city’s oldest main sewer was built in 1907 of brick and is crumbling and there are long stretches of newer trunk lines built of deteriorating concrete.

Comrie said city engineers have also added $397 million to the cost they predicted two years ago for modernizing the Hyperion treatment plant near El Segundo. The city is under federal court order to improve Hyperion so that by 1998 all effluent pumped into Santa Monica Bay meets secondary-treatment standards. (The effluent now meets primary-treatment standards, which allow more contamination of the waste.)

Guessing at expenses 12 years away is a crap shoot, Comrie said Monday, and the new figures have been revised with the best estimates of City Hall analysts about unknown factors such as recessions, interest rates and inflation.

If the voters go along, most of the costs--about $2 billion--will be financed by the sale of revenue bonds. Los Angeles voters approved the sale of $500 million in bonds last June, and the City Council will be asked today to place a measure on the November ballot to authorize the other $1.5 billion in bonds.

Residential Sewer Charge

Of more concern to residents, however, is the effect on the residential sewer service charge paid every two months on Department of Water and Power bills.

The average charge now is about $12.24 per bill, the city says. Two years ago, when the $2.3-billion sewer program was approved, the City Council said the service charges would rise steadily until by 1998 it would be $32.28 per bill.

But Comrie and two council committees are recommending that the fees now be raised even quicker, by an average of 23% a year over the next five years. If the council approves today, the charge would rise to $16.48 per bill next year and to $35.04 in 1993. If voters reject the bond issue, the charge would need to be $54 in 1993, Comrie said.

The money needs to be collected faster in part because some sewer repair work has been accelerated by a council order initiated by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, Comrie said, and in part because of the staggering increase in overall costs.

Industries that use the sewer system will be tagged with an even more rapid increase in the fee they pay. Business now pays $102 for every 100 gallons of water used at the peak of the day, but under the new plan would pay $217 per 100 gallons in 1993.

“It is very important that we do it and do it this year,” said Yaroslavsky, chairman of the council Finance and Revenue Committee. “The more our engineers have gotten into the sewer system, the more they realized what a mess it is.”