14-Month Plan Asks Steep Rises in City’s Sewer, Water Rates

San Diegans would face unprecedented increases in sewer and water bills over the next 14 months to pay for construction of a host of new projects and improve the quality of drinking water under a proposal set to come before the San Diego City Council this month.

Developers--and, eventually, buyers of new homes--would be socked with even larger increases in the one-time sewer and water hookup fees.

Under the plan, proposed Friday by the city’s Water Utilities Department, an average family’s sewer bill would rise 47%, from $13.52 to $19.87 monthly, effective July 1. The charge would then jump an additional 47%, from 19.87 to $29.22 per month a year later.

Water rates would increase by 25%, from $16.32 to $20.40 monthly, on Jan. 1, 1990. All told, the price hikes will raise the average two-month bill for the city’s 1 million sewer and water users from the current $60 to about $100.

Rates Expect to Fall

Planners believe that the monthly rates will hold until fiscal year 1995, although they admit that the totals may be changed by inflation.

“This is the first of the proposed increases to come, which eventually will force many San Diego families into choosing whether to feed the children or pay the sewer bills,” said an aide to Councilman Bruce Henderson, the council’s most outspoken critic of the plan to build a new sewage-treatment system. That construction project, now estimated at $2.4 billion to $4.2 billion, is responsible for much of the sewer-rate increase.

Even Councilman Ron Roberts, a key supporter of the upgraded sewer-treatment project required by federal law, expressed concern that water utilities officials want residents to absorb the full increases so soon, especially when a construction timetable for the system has yet to be set. The city and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency are locked in a federal court battle over that timetable.

When planners released the price estimates for the system in March, Roberts and others assumed that the rate increases would be phased in by 1995.

“I think we were anticipating a gradual increase of prices,” he said. “It concerns me when we see such an aggressive program of price increases.”

Home builders face even larger price increases as the city implements its plan to force new growth to pay for itself. Under the proposal, one-time sewer hookup fees would rise 75%, from $1,617 to $2,903, July 1. They would jump another 75%, from $2,903 to $5,385, a year later.

Water Rates to Go Up

Water hookup fees for new homes would skyrocket, increasing 160% from $616 to $1,651 on July 1. Unlike the residential sewer and water rates, however, the hookup fees would continue to increase yearly. Sewer hookup fees would reach $6,587, and water fees would be $2,985 by fiscal year 1995.

Representatives of the development industry said that, under current market conditions, in which demand is outstripping supply, those costs would certainly be passed on to buyers of new homes, probably growing even larger by the time they show up in the final price tag of a home.

Residential water rate increases are needed to pay for a $32.9 million upgrading of water treatment required by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, and could go higher if consultants conclude that an $100 million to $150 million more in technology is required, said Henry Pepper, assistant water utilities director.

The rate increase will also pay for $23.5 million in water main replacements, $16 million in pipeline improvements and a new, $4.5-million charge imposed by the County Water Authority.

The sewer rate increases will pay for the $68-million to $89-million annual cost of planning, designing and starting construction of the new sewage treatment system; the $97-million cost of extending the Point Loma treatment plant’s ocean outfall by 8,000 feet, as required by the state ocean plan; the $30.6-million cost of sewer main replacements, and the $30-million cost of removing sludge-drying beds from Fiesta Island, among other projects.