■ Hike in residents’ rates ranges from 63 cents to $1.25 per unit
Benicia City Council approved a temporary water rate surcharge to help the city cope with the additional costs brought on by California’s severe drought that is the result of three consecutive years of below-normal rainfall.
The panel agreed with City Manager Brad Kilger’s recommendation to adopt an urgency ordinance immediately and introduce a regular ordinance amendment that would let the city cope with disruption of its water supply.
Earlier this year, the State Water Project announced that Benicia would get none of the 17,000 acre-feet of water for which it had contracted, even though no matter how much the city gets it must pay for the entire contract. Later the state said it would let Benicia and other contractors get 5 percent of their allotment, starting this month.
Drought-related costs for Benicia were expected to reach $2.58 million. The city’s new finance director, Karin Schnaider, said the city originally expected to pay $980,900 for water purchases, $134,000 for conservation, $264,000 for capital conservation projects and $999,117 for operating expenses.
That’s been reduced by nearly $200,000 through grant projects funded by the Valero-Good Neighbor Steering Committee settlement agreement, Schnaider said.
And because of this reduction, the surcharges announced last July also were reduced, she said.
Original per-unit surcharges were to be 66 cents for Tier 1 residential customers, $1.07 for Tier 2 residential customers and $1.39 for Tier 3 residential customers; and 67 cents for Tier 1 nonresidential and 92 cents for Tier 2 nonresidential customers.
The revised per-unit surcharges would be 63 cents for Tier 1, 97 cents for Tier 2 and $1.25 for Tier 3 residential users; and 61 cents for Tier 1 and 86 cents for Tier 2 nonresidential customers.
Among residential customers, Tier 1 use up to 8 units of water each month. A unit is 748 gallons of water, “about 50 bathtubs full,” Schnaider said.
Tier 2 residential users consume 8 to 30 units a month, and Tier 3 residential users consume more than 30 units a month.
Low-income seniors, whose water bills are subsidized, would not see any increase in charges so long as they use no more than 8 units a month, Schnaider said. Should they exceed that, they would be assessed the same surcharge as their neighbors.
Nonresidential surcharges would be 61 cents a unit for Tier 1 — those who consume no more than 30 units — and 86 cents for those consuming more.
City employees have been in talks with Valero Benicia Refinery, which uses both raw and treated water in its operations, about cutbacks in its consumption, Schnaider said.
Its untreated water apportionment would be nearly $1.2 million, she said, which would be paid at $99,000 a month.
“We know there are fluctuations,” Schnaider told the Council. So in addition to ongoing calculations, the refinery’s water bill and payments would be reconciled, comparing actual drought costs it owes with the revenues collected.
“This process is typical,” she said.
To block the surcharge, at least 4,675 property owners had to file objections in writing, but City Clerk Lisa Wolfe said the city only received 112 protests.
In other water news, three more families asked the Council on Tuesday to explain reports that the city was losing 25 percent of its water through leaks.
City Manager Brad Kilger and the city’s new Public Works Director Graham Wadsworth explained that the loss wasn’t from leaks, but from flawed meters that aren’t recording all the water customers are using.
That would end if the city installed new meters, but that’s expected to cost at least $2 million, Wadsworth said. “We’re looking into grants and loans,” he said.
That change also would make meter reading far more efficient, going from employees walking from home to home to read meters to two hours of checking via a laptop.
New meters also would let customers monitor their own water use online. “There are definitely more benefits,” Wadsworth said.
“The city is not losing 25 percent of its water,” Kilger said, repeating the same contention he expressed when a Contra Costa Times story said the city’s water was leaking away at that rate.
Though the city has found a few leaks, he said, the real problem was inaccurate meters that are letting customers get some of their water at no charge.
“We call it unbilled water,” Mayor Elizabeth Patterson said.
The city adopted an emergency ordinance that noted the community’s conservation effort that, most recently, has exceeded the 20 percent requested by both the Council and Gov. Jerry Brown.
However, the water cutback has placed “severe financial pressure” on the Water Enterprise Fund, the amendment noted. The emergency ordinance temporarily authorized the Council to launch the surcharge to compensate for the loss on a temporary basis until costs are recovered and the water supply had stabilized.
The Council also unanimously introduced a regular ordinance amendment that would let it impose the surcharge more conventionally. The Council will vote a second time on this amendment.
“Tonight went smoothly,” Patterson said. “The community has responded.”
She praised residents, surpassed only by those in Sacramento, in cutting back on their water consumption.
“You are among the elite in California,” she said. “Don’t let up.”