Expansion Plan May Double O.C. Sewer Fees

When Orange County’s largest sewer agency improves waste treatment and expands capacity to meet future population growth, somebody will have to pay -- perhaps twice what they do today.

Planning a $2.36-billion capital improvement program, the Orange County Sanitation District’s board of directors will decide Wednesday whether to double sewer fees for hundreds of thousands of homes, businesses, and institutions over the next five years.

The money is needed to rebuild or replace the district’s aging pumps and sewer mains, some of which are more than 60 years old, district officials said. The rest will be used to increase plant capacity, improve ground water replenishment programs and meet environmental laws with full secondary treatment.

Whether to adopt the costly two-stage process became controversial a year ago, when environmentalists pressed the district to cancel a federal waiver allowing it to discharge less-treated waste water into the ocean. Though it was never proven, there was concern that effluent from its outfall off Huntington Beach might have contributed to a high rate of beach closures.

Board members who support the improvements say rate hikes are vital to upgrade the system and provide service for at least 400,000 additional people by 2020.

Annual fees could double from $87.50 to $175 per single-family home over five years. New rates for the district’s half-million customers in north and central Orange County will remain below the national average of $244, according to a survey of hundreds of sewer agencies. Another study shows the average California bill is $242.

“If we don’t do the major things now, it will cost us more in the future, and we will no longer have the reliable facilities we take for granted,” said Shirley McCracken, OCSD board president and Anaheim councilwoman.

Other board members question the scale of the improvements and whether fees must be raised in all five years. They expressed concern about ratepayers, especially those on fixed incomes, and worried that proposed improvements would face cost overruns like many public works projects and force rates even higher.

“We need to go from a wish list to a priority list,” said Norm Eckenrode, Placentia councilman and 12-year board member. “We are not planning properly for our expenditures in the future. If we take care of everything on that wish list over the next 10 years, we are looking at bills of $500 to $600 a year” per home.

The agency’s 25 directors are scheduled to consider the rate hikes after a public hearing at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the district’s Fountain Valley headquarters. Officials expect a lively discussion by directors, and it is unclear whether the proposed hikes will get the two-thirds vote required to pass.

If approved, sewer fees would increase 15% a year for five years. The increase would appear on December property tax bills.

Average fees for businesses that don’t need discharge permits would increase by at least $142 every year, district figures show. Annual rate hikes would average $1,938 or more for large users with waste water permits, such as hospitals, manufacturing plants and commercial operations.

Annual sewer fees for single-family residences are $328 in Los Angeles, $585 in San Diego and $588 in San Francisco, according to a statewide study by Black & Veatch, a national engineering and consulting firm.

The Orange County district serves about 2.4 million people and 22 cities from Irvine northward. Two treatment facilities -- one in Fountain Valley, the other in Huntington Beach -- process about 234 million gallons of waste a day, an amount projected to increase to 321 million gallons a day by 2020. Present capacity is about 276 million gallons daily.

The board last raised rates in 2002, when annual fees went from $80 to $87.50 per home to help cover increasing capital and operating costs.

Earlier this year, district officials proposed a 20% increase each year for five years. In May, board members lowered that to 15% a year out of concern for the impact on customers and because of lower borrowing rates.

“If we do more financing and spread the cost out over time, we don’t need to raise rates nearly as much,” said board member Brian Brady, a representative from the Irvine Ranch Water District.

If the five-year rate plan doesn’t pass, Brady said, he’d back a compromise -- a 15% increase for one year. Then directors could look for other ways to save money and evaluate whether further hikes are needed.

“One way or another, we are going to have to make these investments,” Brady said. “We are wrestling with the most equitable way to do this.”

Many board members agree that a rate hike is needed soon to provide for a growing population and to overhaul or replace parts of the system.

The district has pump stations in Newport Beach dating to 1938 and main sewer lines that are more than 50 years old, such as the “magnolia trunk,” which serves Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Stanton, Anaheim and Westminster.

Overall, the proposed spending plan includes about $1.1 billion to refurbish and upgrade treatment facilities, $580 million for new sewers, $422 million for secondary treatment, $80 million for conservation programs and $180 million to replenish ground water supplies that keep seawater out of aquifers.

“We are not being capricious with the public’s resources,” said board member and Irvine Councilwoman Beth Krom. “The good thing is, we have been resourceful and able to maintain low fees. What we are talking about in terms of a rate increase is not huge dollars.”

Fullerton Mayor Don Bankhead, who has been on the board for three years, said he isn’t convinced the staff has justified the increases. He says the proposed projects can be financed and paid off over a long period.

“Some of the things we have approved will cost a lot of money,” Bankhead said. “Until we get some information showing why the current rates won’t take care of it, I will not support increases of 15% every year for five years.”

Perhaps, the most controversial part of the expansion plan has been the decision to install full secondary treatment facilities to meet requirements of the federal Clean Water Act. The law requires two levels of treatment to kill most bacteria and viruses before sewage is discharged into oceans, rivers and lakes.

In July 2002, the board voted 13 to 12 to go to full secondary treatment and opt out of a federal waiver program, which had allowed the release of less-treated sewage into the ocean.

The Orange County district was one of 36 agencies out of 16,000 nationwide that held a federal waiver. Only about half of the 234 million gallons of sewage it discharged daily received secondary treatment, which relies on microorganisms to consume organic waste. The waiver was scheduled to expire this month.

“We, as environmentalists, support this,” Chris Evans, executive director of the Surfrider Foundation, said of the move to full secondary treatment and the district’s spending plans.

“This will take us to a cleaner local world here,” Evans said. “It’s not a nicety. This is a must-do.”

But Eckenrode--one of 12 board members who opposed full secondary treatment -- says the decision to handle all of the district’s sewage that way represents what is wrong with the priorities of the proposed capital improvement program.

He questions whether full secondary treatment is necessary, considering that when the waiver was in effect, discharge from the outfall five miles offshore was never conclusively linked to contamination that closed much of the Huntington Beach shoreline in summer 1999.

Also, the cost of secondary treatment, he says, could reach $600 million, far more than the $422 million now estimated.

The money, Eckenrode says, would be better spent trying to deal with urban runoff, an enormous source of contamination for the ocean during winter storms. City and county governments now are grappling with federal requirements to deal with the problem.

During dry weather, the district filters a small amount of urban runoff for Huntington Beach. But the proposed capital improvement program doesn’t include facilities to process the giant rainy season flows.

“I don’t think the votes are there” for the proposed rate increase, Eckenrode said. “We need to repair our infrastructure, maintain our lines and address urban runoff.”