Opinion: SF residents: Brace yourselves for skyrocketing water and sewer rates
San Franciscans: Brace yourselves for skyrocketing utility rates. Combined water and sewer bills will increase by 8% annually, tripling over the next 20 years. Hetch Hetchy customers outside of San Francisco will get hit hard, too, and the situation is likely to get much worse. The current rate crisis is the result of decades of deferred maintenance, and the failure to recognize and adapt to changing water use patterns. Over many years, utility revenues were used to subsidize general city services rather than to maintain and upgrade the Hetch Hetchy Water System and wastewater infrastructure. At the same time, per capita water use declined and population growth slowed, reducing revenues. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is now playing catch-up on a massive infrastructure backlog.
—written by Peter Drekmeier, policy director for the Tuolumne River Trust and former mayor of Palo Alto