Water District Board to Vote on 23% Rate Hike

Ventura County’s major water supplier will vote early next week on a 23% rate hike that could slap an extra $3 on most residents’ monthly bills starting this summer.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which funnels water through regional agencies to nearly 500,000 customers in Ventura County, has proposed jacking up water prices by 23% starting July 1. The MWD board of directors will vote on the hike Tuesday after a public hearing Monday in Los Angeles.

Designed to boost MWD revenue so the district can carry out a $6-billion capital-improvement program, the price hike would trickle down to residents and commercial customers in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Moorpark, Camarillo and parts of Oxnard.

All five cities receive water from the Calleguas Municipal Water District, which in turn gets its supply from the MWD. The higher rate would thus ripple through the system, raising the average family’s water bill to $240 a year, up from $204 in 1992-93, Calleguas Director Donald Kendall said.

In addition, Ventura County residents living outside the Calleguas District may soon have to set aside a few extra dollars a month for water service.

Fearful of state funding cuts that could tear away 25% of their revenue, directors of the United Water Conservation District and Casitas Municipal Water District on Friday warned customers to brace for significant price hikes, although they declined to speculate on how big they would be.

Together, the districts supply more than 200,000 customers in Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Paula, Ojai, Fillmore and Piru.

While the average household bill would rise only a few dollars a month, farmers’ irrigation costs would jump by about $200 per acre a year if the MWD’s new rate is approved, according to Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. About 10,000 acres of citrus and avocado groves lie within the Calleguas District and another 100,000 acres are in the United District.

“This will impact their ability to compete with other areas that produce the same commodities,” Laird said of the growers. “It will make it harder for them to earn the kind of margins they need to remain viable.”

Angry local officials on Friday criticized the Metropolitan Water District’s proposed rate increase--the third double-digit price jump in as many years. After maintaining flat rates for five years, the district levied hikes of 13% in 1991 and 23% in 1992.

This year’s increase, some critics charged, unfairly saddles Ventura County consumers with the whopping cost of the MWD’s improvement projects elsewhere in the state, most notably a huge, $1.5-billion reservoir under construction in Riverside County.

“It’s hard to visualize what the heck they’re doing way over there that could affect us here,” Thousand Oaks Councilman Frank Schillo said.

At least one project in the works, a 23-mile pipeline to pump MWD water to ground-water basins near Moorpark along a route parallel to the Santa Paula Freeway, directly affects east county residents. Currently, the MWD’s only direct link to the Conejo Valley runs through the Santa Susana Mountains and is vulnerable during earthquakes, MWD spokesman Jay Malinowski said.

Furthermore, he said, the reservoir will double Southern California’s water-storage capacity and thus help the MWD juggle its resources during prolonged droughts.

“Simply because a project is 80 miles from Calleguas doesn’t mean people in that area won’t benefit,” Malinowski said.

Although he buys that argument, John Elwell, director of community services for Camarillo, has another beef with the MWD. Current customers, he said, are picking up the tab for future residents by subsidizing improvements to expand the system’s capacity.

Charging each new customer a substantial connection fee would be more fair than dividing the cost of expansion among existing users, Elwell said.

Last year, the MWD unsuccessfully lobbied the state Legislature to amend its charter so it could charge developers connection fees. When it became clear that the proposed amendment would fail, the MWD dropped its effort. The district does not plan to pick up the issue again this year, Malinowski said, adding that current customers have always subsidized future growth.

“The Metropolitan Water District began in 1928, and the taxpayers and ratepayers who lived in this area in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s in effect subsidized the system for those who moved here later,” Malinowski said.

“Someone else paid for us,” he said. “When you moved here, no one knocked on your door and said, ‘You owe us $20,000 for your share of the Colorado River.’ ”

Times staff writer Ron Soble contributed to this story.

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