Cambria CSD customers will be paying more for water and sewer starting next month

Customers of the Cambria Community Services District will be paying more for water and sewer services starting July 1, in an annual uptick laid out in the district’s 2018 rate increase resolution and passed again by the Board of Directors on May 23.

These rate raises and a similar increase planned for 2020 were approved in the board’s 2018 action. However, the board decided then not to make the 2019 and 2020 rate hikes automatic, but reserved the right to consider them again before they’re added to ratepayers’ bills.

Analysis in the meeting’s staff report indicates that water rates will rise by 10 percent, sewer rates by 15 percent and rates for the Sustainable Water Facility by 14 percent. All three rates have two sections, one for fixed service charges and another for charges based on the quantity of water, sewage or treated water through the SWF plant.

All five directors agreed after discussion the increases were needed, but when it came time to vote, Director Harry Farmer abstained because he objects to size of the increase for the SWF. The increases are needed, the staff report said, to make sure the district collects enough money to:

• Make its two utility “enterprise” funds solvent.

• Pay for capital improvements to repair, replace and/or upgrade aging infrastructure.

• Pay SWF expenses.

Money paid into an enterprise fund can only be used for that department; water and EWS money is considered to be the same enterprise fund, and can be used for either service, according to Board President Dave Pierson. Loan documents for the SWF require separate accounting of those funds.

The SWF plant isn’t operating, but the district continues to levy fixed charges for it, as there are ongoing expenses to cover. Primary among those is the $9 million loan (plus interest) for the plant, but there also are maintenance, continuing work toward getting a permanent permit to operate the plant beyond its current emergency-only status, and efforts toward decommissioning and/or revamping the plant’s problematic brine-impoundment pond.

The district has been working to empty the pond, but recent late-season rains added more water, according to staff. Now, weather permitting, it’s estimated that the pond won’t be empty until sometime this month. The pond didn’t work as designed, so last September, CCSD filed a $3.5 million lawsuit against CDM Smith, the project’s designer/contractor.