Huntington Beach OKs $60 Annual Fee to Fix Sewers

Under court order to fix its leaking sewer system, the Huntington Beach City Council has approved a $60 annual fee on residents and business owners to maintain and repair underground lines that for years spewed large amounts of sewage into the ground.

The fee takes effect Oct. 4 and should generate $5.6 million a year that the city will use for a variety of projects, including replacing cracked pipes and placing plastic slips in some aging lines.

Huntington Beach joins a small but growing number of cities imposing fees to prevent sewage leaks, which is one of the leading causes of beach pollution.

Laguna Beach last year raised fees to about $300 annually for the next three years to help fix its aging system.

Huntington Beach’s City Council approved the measure late Monday on a 6-1 vote, with most officials saying the fee was the only way to prevent further leaks.

“What the council understands . . . is that this is a priority, a problem in Orange County and a problem most cities I hope are recognizing,” said Councilwoman Shirley Detloff.

Councilman Dave Garofalo cast the lone dissenting vote. “I don’t think we should charge people a sewer fee without proving that there’s a crisis, and I don’t think we’ve done that,” he said.

The vote comes four months after the city pleaded guilty to three violations of state water laws by failing to report the leaks to state and county health officials.

The charges were brought by the district attorney’s office after the grand jury conducted an investigation and city officials were brought in to testify.

In a plea agreement, the city was sentenced to five years’ probation, during which time officials must cooperate with a cleanup order, which already had been filed by the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The city also was fined $250,000 to assess and clean up damage from the leaks.

Prosecutors said the city allowed as much as 71,000 gallons of raw sewage to leak every day for several years in the late 1990s. During that period, the city failed to report the leaks to three local and state agencies as required by law.

Even before the settlement, the city said it was trying to deal with the problem by reinforcing decaying sewers in the downtown area with plastic piping. Revenues from the sewer fee will be used to continue that effort.

The fee breaks down to $5.30 per month for single-family homes, $4.40 a month for apartments, mobile homes and townhouses and $6.15 for most businesses.

Wayne Baglin, a Laguna Beach councilman and member of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, said the council’s approval of the matter demonstrates that the political currents are changing when it comes to new fees to help reduce water pollution.

In the past, Baglin said, city officials have been wary of new fees, fearing that residents would rise in protest.

“I think most citizens would be supportive of it right now,” Baglin said.

“I’m not sure they would have been five years ago--or even two years ago.”

The issue of leaking sewers extends beyond California.

The nation’s 16,000 waste-water systems, which treat about 17 billion gallons of sewage a day, face a staggering price tag to update deteriorating systems of about $23 billion annually, according to the Assn. of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies.