‘This is an outrage’: MMWD water bill surge stuns some ratepayers

The first water bills since the Marin Municipal Water District’s historic rate increases are causing sticker shock for some residents.

The county’s largest water supplier significantly overhauled its rates in July as it works to increase water supplies at a level not seen in decades and to recover financial losses from the recent drought.

Prior to the rate increase, the district told ratepayers that the median single-family home would likely have a 20% increase in the bimonthly water bill during the first year of the four-year rate plan.

But some residents state their September and October bills say otherwise.

“It’s just not the reality,” Kentfield resident Topher Gaylord said. “I think what they are going to find and what they are already finding is most of my neighbors and most of the people I see on message boards are shocked and frustrated with the percentage increase of their bills on the new rate structure.”

Tim Peterson of San Anselmo wrote in an email that his bill doubled, even though he decreased his water use by 35% compared to a year ago.

“This is an outrage,” Peterson said. “On what planet does MMWD think this is going to fly? I think the new tier system is a scam to punish anyone who does not live in a desert landscape or an apartment with no yard.”

District staff, governing board members and supporters of the rate plan said the changes were necessary to make the investments needed for a secure water supply. In 2021, the district was the only Bay Area water agency that faced the possibility of depleting its local reservoir supplies as soon as mid-2022.

The district plans to invest nearly $35 million in new water supply projects during the next four years. The potential projects include enlarged reservoirs, a brackish desalination plant, new pipelines to connect to the Russian River and improvements to the existing water supply system.

“We were elected into office to help solve a crisis that we were handed by drought and by a lack of supply,” said district board member Jed Smith, who was elected in late 2022. “We are still in a massive crisis in Marin. We are highly focused on solving that and it’s going to take a lot of capital to do so.”

District spokesperson Adriane Mertens said rate revenues so far have remained consistent with what was budgeted.

“Water demand remains low and so it is fortunate that the board used conservative revenue estimates when establishing the new rate structure that is contributing to the increase on customer bills,” Mertens wrote in an email. “The district is just over halfway through the first billing cycle where the new rates are reflected, but revenues received thus far are generally consistent with what was forecasted.”

The district also said the rate revenue can be used to leverage more grant funding for maintenance projects, fill staff vacancies and increase funding for wildfire prevention in the 22,000 acres of land the agency manages in the Mount Tamalpais watershed.

Additionally, the district said it was close to depleting its emergency reserve funds during the 2020-2022 drought, having lost $1 million per month because of lower water sales and increased purchasing of imported Russian River water.

Smith said that while he has heard constituents talk about higher water costs, he said there hasn’t been shock or surprise. Instead, he said, residents have told him they will hold the district and its board members accountable for living up to their promises.

“This is a highly thought-through process to respond to what our community was saying,” Smith said, “and what our customers were saying was that it was really dire that we almost ran out of water in 2021.”

Smith said the new rate structure rewards conservation, with lower water users getting smaller increases in their water bills. Additionally, he said the district has a robust low-income program that can help reduce bills.

Several residents spoke out against the rate proposal before its adoption at a May board meeting, with many ratepayers citing concerns about affordability. Larry Russell was the only board member to vote against the rate plan, saying it did not address his concerns about affordability and equity. Russell was unavailable for comment on Thursday.

The four-year rate hike plan marked a major shift from how the district previously charged.

The district charges rates based on how much water a customer uses. Residential customers are placed into one of three tiers depending on their water consumption. Tier 1 charges the lowest rate for those who conserve, and tier 3 charges the highest rates for those who use more water.

Under the new rate plan, the district lowered the water use threshold between the tiers, meaning that customers who once were in the lowest-rate tier now find themselves paying much more for their water. Additionally, the district removed a seasonal adjustment to rates that allowed residents to use more water during the summer without being penalized with a higher-rate tier.

Prior to this rate plan, tier 1 ratepayers were paying about $4.73 per 100 cubic feet of water, which is written as “ccf” on water bills. One ccf is about 748 gallons. Customers could use between 21 and 26 ccf in a billing period, depending on the season, without being placed in a higher-rate tier.

The new plan charges tier 1 customers $7.67 per ccf but only allows customers to use up to 15 ccf before being placed into tier 2. If they use more than the tier 1 maximum, these customers will be paying $10.02 per ccf, which is about a 111% increase compared to what residents paid under the previous tier 1 rate before the rate changes.

Gaylord said he and other ratepayers understand the need for the district to increase local water supplies, but he said the cost increases under the new rate structure are too much, too soon.

“I think everyone recognizes that we need to invest in water infrastructure for the future and the sustainability of the watershed,” Gaylord said. “But it feels a lot like, at the moment, what the board and ultimately what the water district represented as a rate increase is just not materializing.”

Other residents support of the rate changes, saying the investments in water supply are long overdue.

Steve Isaacs of the Marin Coalition for Water Solutions said that while he understands the concerns about the rate hikes, the challenges the district faces cannot be wished away.

“It’s comparable to a rent increase. If you haven’t had a rent increase in years then catching up is going to be painful,” Isaacs said. “That’s really what they’re doing, unfortunately, is they need to catch up after the previous boards refused to do anything about increasing the fees.”

In the years since 1992, there were 16 years when rates were held flat and three years when rates spiked by more than 10%, according to figures provided by Bret Uppendahl, the district finance director.

In 1993, the district reduced rates by 25%, and rates held flat for 11 of the 14 following years. The board adopted larger rate increases in 2016 and added a new capital maintenance fee charged to customers beginning in 2019 to raise funds for its maintenance backlog and fire prevention work.

Kimery Wiltshire of Confluence West, a Sausalito organization that focuses on western water issues, supports the rate increase, stating the board “had the political courage to do what was needed.”

“So, in other words, if the MMWD’s previous Board had, like almost every other California water agency, raised rates incrementally over the past decade, there wouldn’t be this hard-to-swallow sticker shock,” Wiltshire wrote in an email.

The Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers, a Marin nonprofit watchdog group, also supported the rate changes, stating they were fairer than the previous plan, especially in how the district charges certain fixed fees.

The group’s president, Mimi Willard, said that while the district reported the median single-family customer would see a 20% increase on the bill, she said many customers don’t fit the definition of median.

“This could have been better communicated. That said, for those customers who were paying attention, there was a rate calculator on their website,” Willard wrote in an email. “It was very useful for modeling what would happen to an individual customer’s bill.”

More information on the rate plan and a link to the rate calculator is online at marinwater.org/2023RateSetting.