Simi Valley Increases Water Prices for Customers Who Use Too Much

Reacting to state water cutbacks, the Simi Valley City Council has adopted a water conservation program that will increase water rates for excessive users beginning Friday.

The council’s action Monday followed Thousand Oaks’ decision last week to fine residents who fail to reduce water consumption. Oxnard is also considering implementing a rationing ordinance.

All three cities receive most of their water through agencies supplied by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which earlier this month ordered cutbacks by all of its customers.

The MWD, which receives its water from the state, also supplies water to Moorpark and Camarillo, where a combination of voluntary and mandatory conservation measures have already been implemented.

Although Ventura has had a mandatory water-rationing ordinance since March, it does not receive any of its water from the MWD.

The MWD’s mandatory water-rationing plan, prompted by cutbacks in state water supplies, calls for a 10% reduction in water use by residential and commercial customers and a 30% reduction by agricultural customers.

Simi Valley’s voluntary water conservation measures yielded a 3.85% reduction in water consumption in 1990 from the year before.

Under the MWD’s new plan, the price of water delivered to a city or agency will triple if the limits are exceeded.

Under Simi Valley’s new rate structure, residential customers will be allowed 5,000 cubic feet of water during the city’s two-month billing period--500 cubic feet less than now allowed. They will pay 65 cents for each 100 cubic feet of the allowed amount and $1.13 for every 100 cubic feet of additional water. One hundred cubic feet of water is equal to 748 gallons.

For example, the bimonthly billing rate for a household using 6,000 cubic feet of water would be $60.86, up from $57.56, a 4.5% increase. This includes a fixed-rate charge of $17.06.

The new rate structure also requires commercial customers to use 10% less water than in 1990 and agricultural customers to use 30% less or face similar rate increases.

Simi Valley officials said they believe that the new rates will help the city achieve the required reductions.

“I think this is a real good way to get people to conserve,” Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said Monday, before the council voted on the new water rates. “I think pricing is the best way to do it. It’s the tried-and-true way.”

The new rates affect more than 17,000 households, 1,200 commercial and industrial users and 43 agricultural users in Simi Valley, officials said.

Lloyd Boland, president of the Simi Valley Chamber of Commerce, warned the council Monday night that the rates could hurt small businesses and asked that an appeal process be set up for hardship cases.

But the council said it will not make exceptions.

“I understand that there are going to be some unhappy people. . . . But businesses have to suffer along with the rest of us,” Stratton said. “The bottom line is that we’re all in this together.”

Councilwoman Judy Mikels said residents should become accustomed to using less water since the statewide drought is now in its fifth year.

“What we’re facing here, folks, is that it’s time to pay,” she said. “I quite frankly don’t see us returning to the uses we once had.”

Michael Kleinbrodt, the city’s deputy public works director, said the new rate structure will remain in effect as long as drought conditions continue and MWD’s conservation plan is in place.