Revamped Sewer Rates Fill the Bill

Talk about never being satisfied. A year after Los Angeles revamped sewer rates to reduce the bills of many San Fernando Valley homeowners, the divisive issue has landed again in front of the City Council because some residents complain that their bills are still too high. Although The Times endorsed previous efforts to rationalize city sewer charges, the current complaints sound more like whining than true injustice.

Prior to last year’s changes, residents with large yards or pools got penalized because sewer charges were calculated on how much water was used--not how much actually went into the sewer. So residents who used most of their water to keep their grass green got charged for a service they never used. In hot summer months, that added up to a lot of money down the drain. That was unfair.

Ideally, residents would be charged only for the water they actually send into the sewer through the washing machine or dishwasher or toilet. But putting meters on every house was too expensive. So the current rates are calculated based on how much water a homeowner uses during the winter, when consumption traditionally dips and when much of the water used goes into the sewer rather than percolating into the ground. Winter consumption is then used as a baseline to figure sewer charges. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s fair.

That’s why the council ought to resist the urge to tinker with it--at least for now.

Although true that some residents are paying as much or more than they used to, they ought to look at their water-use habits. If they leave their sprinklers on all winter as if it were summer, then yes, their sewer bills are going to be high.

In an ideal world, they would be charged only for each gallon they sent down the sewer. Of course, that ideal world would also require a million or so different sewer rate calculations--one to match the habits of every household in the city.