Already facing a $258 million budget deficit, San Diego City Council members spent an hour Tuesday night delivering an unprecedented public bashing of the region’s main water seller for ever-climbing costs.
Water purchases from the San Diego County Water Authority are the city of San Diego’s second-largest expense and its price increase this year was double what the agency once forecasted. Though funded by San Diegans water bills, not the city’s general coffers, the city’s Public Utilities Department has begun a campaign to alert City Council that growing Water Authority prices threaten to eat up much of the city’s water budget. The result means delays on city water projects and maintenance on 3,000 miles of pipeline, and potential staff cuts which has the labor union representing city public utilities workers shook.
“We’re looking at eliminating 275 filled positions right now including all unfilled positions. That’s a lot of Local 127 positions being eliminated,” said Tim Douglass, president of AFSCME Local 127.
The City Council seemed fed up.
“The County Water Authority has been a bad actor. It’s time they get called out,” said District 2 Councilmember Jen Campbell at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
At issue Tuesday was whether the Council should allow the city’s Public Utilities Department to automatically add whatever water price increase the Water Authority approves each year to ratepayer’s bills. Right now, the City Council has to approve each rate increase at a series of public hearings, which slows down the department’s budgeting process. That’s why the department was also asking Council on Tuesday to increase water rates by 5.5 percent beginning in May, because the city’s already paying higher Water Authority prices since Jan. 1 with no ability to recoup the cost from customers.
Come September, the department will again come before Council to ask for another 13.7 percent rate increase, 11 percent of which is the cost of buying water from the Water Authority.
Last year, the Water Authority proposed raising rates on its 22 customer water districts by almost 25 percent for 2025, more than double what the Water Authority predicted it would need to charge few years ago. The news shocked the city of San Diego, the most powerful water district on the Water Authority’s board, which subsequently beat that price hike down to 14 percent and challenged the agency to cut its operating budget by $2 million. (The Water Authority, in turn, argued cutting the rate increase simply staves off necessary price increases to pay off debt and make repairs to its large aqueducts until a later date. It still hasn’t identified the full $2 million in cuts.)
Another complicating factor for the city is that the Water Authority sets new water rates every year and the city is trying to budget out its own charges over the next four years. Each year the Water Authority’s actual price increases come in way over what San Diego expects, as it did this year, those costs eat into how much the city planned to spend on its own work. For example, the city has a multi-billion-dollar water recycling project it’s currently working on and those bills will start coming due once it’s online in 2026.
The Water Authority’s General Manager, Dan Denham, said in a statement that while it’s too early to forecast what will happen in 2025, many of the same pressures on rates in 2024 remain.
“We will continue to look at every opportunity to reduce costs while maintaining our critical regional infrastructure that the entire county relies upon,” Denham said.
At Council, the utilities department leaders asked the elected leaders for the power to bake those Water Authority rate hikes – whatever they may be in future years – into water bills without having to go through numerous votes at City Council. But most of the Council agreed that doing so would relinquish the watchdog powers of elected officials to publicly scrutinize the Water Authority’s prices from the dais. In other words, the City Council is gearing up to put a lot more pressure on the Water Authority.
“I am absolutely not OK with giving them the authority to increase rates until they get serious about keeping rates down,” said Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera. “I’m not seeing demonstrated seriousness from the (Water Authority) in protecting the hard-earned dollars of San Diegans.”
District 5 Councilmember Marni von Wilpert motioned to simply not pay the city’s bills to the Water Authority this year, which got no support. She pointed to the Water Authority’s contracts with Imperial Valley farmers and a privately-run desalination plant that requires the wholesaler to buy large amounts of water even if there’s no demand for it. San Diego’s representatives on the Water Authority’s board have been pushing for the agency to sell off those contracts to save money.
“They’re paying for water we’re never going to drink. I refuse to pay for (the Water Authority’s) ghost water,” von Wilpert said.
District 6 Councilmember Kent Lee said City Council’s authority to vote on Water Authority rate increases could be a point of leverage San Diego shouldn’t give up.
The Council decided not to vote on the Public Utilities Department’s request. The issue could come up again in March.
I have been amazed at the fact that our city water department has continued to raise water rates but does not seem to care that people are not paying their water bills. We own a two-unit condo and share the water bill with the other owner. At their insistence, we each pay half of the water bill separately. We pay ours on time, but the other owner has not paid their half for four or five years. The amount of their outstanding amount due is nearing $2,000. The water department has not taken any action at all. They used to shut off the water, which caused the other owner to pay the outstanding balance on the account but stopped doing that. There seems to be no incentive to pay the outstanding amount. We are only one bill. How many others are out there with large outstanding amounts due?
I agree with you!
I am not sure why you are so worried about that issue. You live in one of the most exclusive areas in Mission Beach (Ensenada Court) so money is obviously not an issue for you. Do you just like to complain about something that has no solution and that does not affect you in any way, shape or form??
I never imagined how expensive water has become. I just moved into a new place here in SD 3b2b with a small front yard medium sized back yard lawn. My bill was almost September bill alone almost $400. Insane. Folks, be careful out there before signing those leases.
I hate to break it to you, but it is not going to get cheaper any time soon. It is water. We must have it. We live in a semi-desert, where there is almost no water. The lack of investment for decades piled up and now those bills are due. If you really want to be mad, be mad at the politicians that ran this city and those that voted for them and their austerity plans in the 80’s and 90’s. The recycled water treatment plants will actually make costs cheaper in the long run. But in all due honesty, it’s easily over a decade before that begins to happen. Best to deal with it and be mad at SDG&E. At least we can actually do something about our choices with power. With water, we already are making the best choices. Truly. It is just expensive.
The parents are fighting again. It doesn’t bode well for the kids. Especially the former council prez who wanted to raid pockets for storm water, general fund, trash, and now tourists. The great protector of you pocketbook.
I wonder how many representatives the City of San Diego has on the SDCWA board of Directors?