Water rates in Oak Park are rising again in January, which is the second part of a rate hike that started in September. I sit on the Triunfo Sanitation board that owns Oak Park Water Service. We decided to raise rates twice to cover first the 17% rate hike from our supplier, Calleguas Municipal Water District in January of this year, and then the 22% coming up from Calleguas in January, 2010.  The Calleguas increase is because of an rate increase  from Metropolitan Water District, which supplies Sacramento Delta water to Calleguas.
The Triunfo board did the raise in 2 parts, because Calleguas hiked rates to us in 2 parts.  Our first hike for September, covered the January  rise of 17% and the second one coming up, starting with the January, 2010 water use is a “pass through” to cover Calleguas 2nd increase of 22%.Â
 But….we are not raising rates 22%, because water is one part of Oak Park Water’s expenses, but they also include piping and equipment upkeep and construction, administration, billing, engineering, etc. So, Oak Park’s second rate hike is between 8.6% to 15.9%, depending on the quantity tier.
The only downside of doing two rate increases instead of one to cover both increases from our supplier, Calleguas, is confusion factor…”didn’t we aleady have a rate raise, so why is it happening again?” But, what two instead of one rate hikes does, is give a little bit of a break for the use periods between September through December. Personally, I would much rather have a break on a bill amount and deal with a little confusion, than not to have that break!
I was thinking that most of us now get it that we have a water crisis in California, and especially in SoCal, because most of our water is imported. For instance, in Oak Park, 100% of our water comes from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta.Â
What are some possible solutions? The first one coming up would be to pass the state proposition coming up next June for more water infrastructure money, including building a peripheral canal that would bring some water around the Delta, instead of through it. That way, we could be pumping it south all the time, instead of off and on because of Delta environmental factors.
Other solutions? If water gets expensive enough, then we could go for desalinazation plants. Also, we may get to the time when we have to use recycled water the way Orange County does. OC injects the tertiary-treated water (the best treatment) in groundwater, where it continues a purifying process for a long time before it comes out of the tap. And, finally, there is the challenge of residents using gray water…which is water from the shower or bathtub, or clothes washer.  Ventura County allows that now, but under very strict guidelines. I think those usage rules could be relaxed, to give us more water for outside irrigation.Â
Posted by Janna Orkney
eco-nerd // Dec 8, 2009 at 8:34 PM
Desalinazation plants may sound like a good idea but in reality, they are a trade off with other natural resources such as natural gas and electricity. It takes a lot of energy to to desalinate water and current rates are aprox 2-3 times the cost of purification of fresh water. Recent advances could lower that rate but it is still only practical for the wealthy arid countries and cities that can afford the rates.
The second problem is what should we do with the brine wastewater that desalination produces? Dumping concentrated wastewater that is high in salt and minerals threatens food resources and aquatic life in the vicinity. Dumping it on land could contaminate groundwater and surface water.
So our choices are ‘toilet to tap’ (eww) or gray water use. Instead of building another infastructure for the transport, we should be working with agriculture, responsible for 77% of our imported water, to make farming more sustainable. Until then, our reductions probably will not have any effect on the water suupply and we will continue to fund the shortage with higher rates.