Sewage and Water Rates Increasing In Redwood City

City Council voted unanimously to increase water and sewage rates by nine percent in Redwood City on Monday, in spite of multiple protests by residents. 

Rosanne Mitchell has lived in Redwood City for 15 years and says that the water and sewage rates are already high. Mitchell particularly protested the way that the city charges residents for sewage during a public hearing on June 10.

“My neighbors have three generations of family living in one house, sometimes there are 12-15 people in their home,” she told. “They’re all using water…everything that’s going down the drain is being charged at the same rate as my household, which has one person. That seems inequitable to me.”

The sewage charge for Redwood City residents is $57.88 per single-family dwelling unit, according to Terence Kyaw, assistant public works director for the City of Redwood City. On August 1, 2013 the new rate will be $63.09 per month for residences, businesses, hospitals, and school districts.

“It’s the most economical way to charge sewer rates,” Kyaw said.  “Otherwise we have to install a meter on each home,” he said, noting that the city would have to pay for those, as well as pay people to read them and maintain them.  “That cost is huge,” he said.

80 people sent letters of protest to city staff detailing their opposition to the rate increases. If a majority of the 23,000 affected property owners had protested, the rate increases could have been negated, according to California Proposition 218. 

However, Redwood City resident Laura Aiden said that everyone is too busy to do that. She talked to many of her neighbors and 100 percent of them said the rates were too expensive.  

“The rates are just incredibly high,” she said. “Nine percent three years in a row for water. It’s incredible. And a lot of us pay several hundred dollars even now,” she said, noting that many of her neighbors have let their lawns die to save water. She presented 38 letters of protest to the deputy city clerk. 

“With salaries going down and rates going up, it’s squeezing everyone in the middle. We have to live within our means; I can’t just say okay raise my salary,” Aiden said.

Sewage bills are delivered with the water bills, which will also increase.

The average Redwood City resident will see their water bill increase by about $11, which will increase the bill from about $125 a month to about $136, according to a staff report prepared for Monday’s City Council meeting.  This is assuming that the household uses about 1,200 cubic square feet of water every month. That translates to about 8,900 gallons.

Water bills are tiered, charging residential and commercial customers different rates depending on the amount of water used per unit.  A unit is 748 gallons. 

In Redwood City, 5,800 residences use 0-10 units of water per month; 8,500 homes use 10-25 units per month; 3,507 use 25-50 units of water per month, while about 800 use greater than 50 units of water, according to the city’s public works department records. Most of the homes that use more than 50 units of water are the larger estates with front and back lawns located in Emerald Hills.

“They must have a swimming pool,” Kyaw joked Wednesday.

Bay area residents are seeing an increase in their water bills this summer, because the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is increasing the rates for water, and renovating its water supply delivery system.  99.9 percent of Redwood City’s water comes from the SFPUC, which is planning to spend about $4.6 billion to upgrade its pipes. 

It is passing on the cost to its customers.  Redwood City’s share is about $10 million annually over the next 30 years, according to public records.

The city has a water and sewage rate stabilization fund, which it is using to dilute some of the costs to Redwood City residents, according to Councilmember Rosanne Faust, who is on the city’s Utilities Commission, which influences pricing policy. 

“We’ve tried to keep some funds in reserve, so that when they [SFPUC] tell us there’s going to be a rate increase of 32 percent, and it’s 46 percent…we find a way to make up that difference, so we’re not raising rates by 20-30 percent the way other communities have to do,” Foust said on June 10. 

“It’s such a complicated issue,” she told residents who protested at the meeting.

“If your water doesn’t come out of the faucet and your toilets don’t flush you’re going to come to the city and have a problem,” she said, noting that she tells her family to conserve water as much as they can.