Dana Point and Neighboring Cities to Expect Higher Water and Sewer Rates

South Coast Water District announced today that factors including increased costs to purchase water from wholesalers and the demand of delivering the water to its customers will cause water and sewer bills to increase for Dana Point and neighboring cities of San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano and Laguna Beach.

The proposal of increasing its rates will be mailed out this week to their customers. The district supplies water to 35,000 residents, 1,000 businesses and 2 million annual visitors to the area. This will be the first time since 2013 that the district has increased its prices.

“The severe drought and future availability of water from up north or the Colorado River has highlighted the need for reliable, sustainable and drought-proof sources of local water supply,” District Manager Andy Brunhart said in an interview with the O.C. Register:

“Pump, reservoirs, we have to have all that in place whether a customer buys water or not,” he said. “We want to create solutions to stabilize our rates. We want to shift costs to annual cost. That way we’re assured we have enough revenue, and people reduce water usage, we can still pay our fixed costs and other bills.”

Dana Point Harbor Jetty by Savannah Sullins

An example of the proposed plan from danapointtimes.com:

FOR EXAMPLE

Under the proposed rate structure, a single-family residential customer with a ¾-inch meter and using 10 CCF, or 7,480 gallons of potable water per month could expect to see a total net increase of $1.67 per week.

This example applies to the 9,500 single-family residential customers in the district.

One CCF (a measurement of centum cubic feet, or hundreds of cubic feet) is 748 gallons.

Because the proposed new rates shift the portion of fixed costs previously included in monthly bills over to yearly property tax bills, the same customer would see a decrease of $18.05 per month ($216.60 per year) on their monthly bill and a $303.54 increase on their annual property tax bill.

“We have proposed to establish new rates going forward for the next five fiscal years,” Brunhart said, adding that the new rate structure supports water conservation and establishes more rate stability—to address the statewide theme of water demands going down, customers conserving more and water districts raising the rates.

Brunhart said the district’s capital improvement program will cost $75 million across the next five years.