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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMINUTES - 06101997 - U1 i U.1 THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF "1 CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA Adopted this Order on June 10, 1997, by the following vote: AYES: Supervisors Rogers, Uilkema, Gerber, Canciamilla and DeSaulnier NOES: None ABSENT: None ABSTAIN: None SUBJECT: Joint Meeting to be Scheduled with the Board of Supervisors and the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) Board of Directors Bill Highfield, W.A.T.E.R., P.O. Box 312, Danville, addressed the Board during Public Comment and encouraged the Board of Supervisors to examine the tiered structure for water rates utilized by the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD). Supervisor Gerber requested that this issue be introduced as an Urgency Item. The Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed to consider this matter as an exception to the Better Government Ordinance. The Board discussed the issue of the upcoming joint meeting with the EBMUD Board of Directors and took the following action: 1. DIRECTED the Clerk of the Board to expedite the scheduling of the joint meeting`with the EBMUD Board of Directors; and 2. REQUESTED that the issue of the EBMUD tiered structure for water rates be included on the joint meeting agenda. I hereby certify that the foregoing is a true and correct copy of an action taken and entered on the minutes of the Board of Supervisors on the date shown. ATTESTED: June 10, 1997 Phil Batchelor, Clerk of the Board of Supervisors and County Administrator Wris'tineW' ampler', Deputy Clerk cc: Supervisors EBMUD Board of Directors Chief Clerk, Board of Supervisors Director, GMEDA Bill Highfield, W.A.T.E.R. RECEIVED JUN 1 0 1997 • 4x1 1 BOARD OF SUPERVISORS CONTRA COSTA CO. THE EAST BAY MUNICIPAL UTILITY DISTRICT RATE STRUCTURE Worldwide attention has been directed in the last decade to the compounding and menacing problems of planet air quality. The accelerating effects of contamination and reduced natural melioration have given the world serious cause for concern. Increasing discharge of life inhibiting gasses and reductions in the earth's green cover of vegetation, rain forest removal, clear-cutting of timber, loss of environmental reservoirs and other induced changes have taken their toll. Nature's capacity to sustain present life systems is obviously in question. While man is slow to correct abuses, one remedy at least is immediately available to us. That is our own amelioration of loss of plant life by encouraging replacement vegetation and it's life preserving natural process conversion of one element of contamination to essential oxygen and the element carbon. Despite this growing problem, the Board of the East Bay Municipal Utility District has adopted, as a matter of policy, a discriminatory rate structure that subsidizes a political majority of low volume domestic customers by providing water to_that group at a rate below the cost of service, while charging, at a higher level, more substantial users with larger families, engaged in animal husbandry or other necessary uses, or maintaining more extensive vegetation. In one rate structure, larger users were required to pay over 315% of the lower volume user cost for the same amount of water These domestic customers who use larger amounts of water are found throughout the District, but constitute a political minority. This is not a west county-east county circumstance, or an example of waste, as the District Board alleges. It is simply a fact that some domestic customers require more water than others. The charge of"waste" is a deliberate fiction. No matter how water efficient they are, they have paid rates far higher than a low-volume consumer, as much as $3.44 for a water unit that cost a low-rate domestic consumer only $1.09. Not only does this create a huge rate differential to attract political support, that high rate provided revenue to subsidize the political majority who obtained water far below the cost of delivery, $1.45 per 750 gallons, and even further below the $3.44 once charged to a high volume user for the same amount of water. 2 It is also absolutely contrary to the State Public Utility Commission requirement that fixed system costs be a principal rate element. Thus, a private public utility would never secure approval of such a politically oriented subsidized rate structure which includes delivery below cost to a political majority. Thus, the EBMUD plan goes directly against years of public policy and public support to establish parks and other greenbelts to increase the quality of life for all citizens. Aside from community aesthetics and comfort, for example, the citizens of Detroit recently rated urban tree programs second only to education. The Lawrence Laboratory has demonstrated that air conditioning costs can be reduced by as much as 57 percent by maintaining three appropriate trees around a dwelling. Two thousand acres of tree canopy will remove six tons of particulate from the air we breathe every day. A single tree will absorb 48 pounds of carbon dioxide annually, and release enough oxygen to sustain two human lives. The City of Sacramento has experienced a 10 percent drop in ambient temperature,with 35 percent citywide canopy cover. Just 120 acres of that tree canopy will absorb 5.5 pounds of carbon monoxide, 127 pounds of sulfur dioxide, 24 pounds of nitrogen dioxide and 170 pounds of miscellaneous particulate. Still, the EBMUD policy, brands larger use of water to maintain vegetation as "waste", and claims higher rates will reduce consumption. While it is patently clear that when water is necessarily required to maintain essential uses such as vegetation, a lesser use will obviously result in lesser vegetation maintenance. Even more serious is the fact that the increased unit charges for larger consumers applies to no other class than single family dwellings, while if conservation were a concomitant fact of higher unit of use charges, higher unit charges for larger uses would be made applicable to all classes of users. It is not. One single section of land devoted to vegetation will provide air cleansing capacity that otherwise would cost $30,000 in scrubbers, filters and mechanical air cleaning. In a Salt Lake City Study, a 20 percent citywide tree canopy retained 19 million gallons of water during a 1-inch rainfall, eliminating the need for expensive catch basins and storm channels. Nationwide, wind break and soil erosion control programs have provided and continue to contribute to an understanding of the critical importance of vegetation. A tree canopy substantially reduces vegetation watering. But, these lessons are lost to the interest of political support not quality water management, and "outside" vegetation is a "waste" of water to be taken advantage of by charging a higher price for such use, so that water may be provided below cost to a political majority. 3 Landscaping can increase property values by at least 10 percent. Each tree has been found to produce $73 in energy conservation, $75 in erosion control, $75 in wildlife shelter, and $50 in air quality benefits. Each tree produces four times the cost of planting and maintenance during its lifetime. 1 The message of Frank Lloyd Wright, that landscaping is the "stage of architecture" obviously has escaped the attention of the Board of the EBMUD. Even if vegetation played a lesser role, the tragedy of that conclusion is obvious for all improvements in any degree, even in carbon dioxide alone, is clearly vital in our diminishing air quality, and vegetation plays many roles in addition to carbon dioxide conversion as pointed out before. But the facts are far different. Studies, particularly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrator and the University of Colorado, demonstrate the error of the Board as vegetation is known to complement the capacity of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide, a principal contributor to the greenhouse effect. In order to divert attention from the inclined rate structure, the EBMUD Board paid $175,000 to secure a consultant report on water rates. The EBMUD Board of Directors gave orders that higher rates should be imposed for larger volumes of use. Given those parameters, the consultant, as requested, presented a study with a built-in prejudice against those with larger needs. But even that report gave reluctant notice that larger water use does not translate into waste. When dealing with multi-family owners, the consultant noted, "Direct applications 'of inverted block rates for multifamily customers would merely penalize large users for being large instead of penalizing those who use water inefficiently." "A small user might be very inefficient and yet pay only the 1st block rate." This logic does not extend to single-family homeowners, however. A small family with little landscaping is presumed to be water-use efficient. A large family or one with substantial landscaping is presumed to be a water waster, no matter how efficiently its water is used. A large volume water user maintaining vegetation is a "waster", but a low-volume user with a smaller family and less vegetation to maintain washing a car is not. If, as the EBMUD Board suggests, conservation is universally generated by higher rates, then subsidized lower rates below cost of delivery must obviously generate unnecessary use. The fact is, the Board majority really is not interested in equitable rates or conservation, but in political support. 4 Conservation was effected before the imposition of higher unit charges for single families was initiated. For Example: r • The total consumption of water in those areas where larger water use is termed "waste"was 11.2 billion gallons in 1986. In 1994, the total consumption in that same area was only 10.8 billion gallons, while the number of single family customers had risen from 54,484 to 66,246. • Thus in the areas portrayed as wasting water, total consumption actually has been reduced, even with the addition of 11,762 families. What EBMUD either does not understand or fails to consider is if higher prices do in fact limit essential use, then income from deliveries at the inflated prices would be reduced. Will EBMUD then protect that political security blanket by again increasing the prices required of larger essential-need users, who then must repeat the tragic cycle that continues until loss of vegetation and termination of other essential needs occurs? Not only will larger consumers who require larger volumes of use continue to pay higher rates to subsidize consumers who require only lesser use, but with these rates in affect which provide subsidy by the sale of water at far less than cost to the political majority, the larger consumers who require larger consumption for essential uses, will be paying an increasing disproportionate share of system earthquake renovation and renovation. These comments upon rates are but a brief review of the essential nature and purposes of the current Board of the East Bay Municipal Utility District. The agenda is to establish a financial management plan that secures a disproportionate income from a political minority. The process not only is served by higher rates for necessary, larger volumes of use, but by increased connection charges, system improvement requirements, charges for so called earthquake improvements through which targeted areas pay to improve service facilities for older areas requiring replacement independent of seismic considerations, imposing unnecessary construction requirement to particular areas and generally increasing charges and service costs to politically limited sections of the District. These issues will be addressed in other discussions. 1. THE REAL PROBLEM OF THIS SINGLE-CLASS DIFFERENTIAL RATE STRUCTURE LIES IN THE ENORMOUS FUTURE COSTS OF A NOW EMASCULATED INTENT TO SECURE AMERICAN RIVER WATER. The effect of the discriminatory single family classification rate structure of EBMUD is not limited to the securing of funds to maintain the present system and 5 t its renovation. It has been made clear that the discriminatory rate structure which has been made to apply only to the single family consumer class, has obviously taken advantage of the numerical minority of that class, those requiring the larger volume of users paying an inequitable share of District expense. To that unconscionable circumstance, must now be added the enormous potential expense of securing an American River source, and the fact that if this subsidy oriented rate system is continued, it is the larger single family consumer who will be burdened with an inequitable share of the cost of the project, and its operation. While those so affected are found in all areas of the District, those whose larger use is occasioned by larger property sizes and consequent vegetation maintenance, are substantially found in the warmer areas of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, and newer areas with larger lot sizes. This potential is quite evident and equally serious, and the American River project must continue to be viewed, in terms of its approval, with a full disclosure of its financing, its costs, and the manner in which those costs are to be secured. To illustrate this point: In order to obscure the subsidy base of its rate structure in providing service below cost to the political majority and not establishing costs upon, primarily, a fair distribution of fixed costs, EBMUD prepared a list of charges by its selected utilities in California distributing water. This list included the Contra Costa Water District, which, by reason of present system capital improvements, has been required to dramatically increase rates. EBMUD making the point that however excessive EBMUD rates are, they are lower than those of the CCWD. Obviously, this is not the issue, but EBMUD made it out to be, publicizing the comparison widely throughout the District. A realistic comparison would require EBMUD to presently project American River and all attendant costs and expand the present rate structure in its present configuration to include payment of these costs. This it has declined to do. Until the American River Project and its financing is made public, no serious determination of its feasibility can be made. In addition to the potential expansion of the discriminatory subsidy of the present rate structure to extend to American River costs, one should carefully review that proposed in the light of its present dimensions compared to its original form. When first outlined in the early `60's, and, in fact in the regional system project of the 1920's, the additional supply of 150,000 acre feet per year was to be secured at an area of water quality equal to that of the Mokelumne at Folsom-South Canal, so that consistent system water quality could be maintained with no source treatment required. To this absolutely essential quality element, was added the 6 i provision of an essential West Delta Reservoir to avoid potential aqueduct failure in the shifting peat soils of the Delta. That project has never materialized. Litigation has limited the times and amounts of water availability through the contract with the Bureau of Reclamation. The essential West Delta Reservoir was eliminated and the capacity of the Walnut Creek Treatment Plant consequentially indispensable to provide an adequate water supply to San Ramon Valley has not been developed. The alternative of a direct access to a Delta supply eliminating the enormous costs of a delivery system from Sacramento has been abandoned along with the pumping facilities at Middle River, and Bixler. The justification being given that the Delta water quality is not acceptable to EBMUD. A quality acceptable to the Contra Costa Water District and nearly half of the domestic water market in Southern California. EBMUD cites the water quality circumstances of September 1977, the second year of a drought when the EBMUD did pump Delta water. Those quality conditions are irrelevant to present or future planning. The miniscule flows of both the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers in 1977 and the consequent intrusion of S.F. Bay Salt Water into the Delta, produced local quality conditions the Contra Costa Water District and all exporters experienced. All those users have continued to use .Delta water ever since. CCWD is building its Los Vaqueros Reservoir to utilize water at periods of highest quality, and EBMUD declined to participate in its expansion which would have provided a West Delta storage facility without the environmental and seismic problems of Buckhorn Reservoir. . Thus, EBMUD has done everything possible to provide a self-fulfilling prophecy of a Sacramento source. That source now is, however, not the pristine American River at Nimbus as represented, but to be taken 25 miles downstream in the sewage discharge area of Sacramento, at the downtown I Street Bridge, adjacent to the Sacramento River and its cargo of agricultural chemical wastes. Curiously, that new source that requires immediate expensive treatment, a circumstance originally totally rejected in the American River Project. Right of access to this new source is being "negotiated" by EBMUD and Sacramento Public agencies, none of whom have any power or authority to determine upon water rights or entitlements. The sole authority to establish a new water right is the State Water Resources Control Board. The sole right of the EBMUD is its contract with the Bureau of Reclamation for 150,000 AFY at Nimbus 25 miles upstream. How that right is to be transferred to a right for substantially less water to be secured only within limited periods of time and of inferior quality, remains to be determined but not by the EBMUD or the political jurisdictions of Sacramento. 7 Unfortunately, as in the case of Delta Water quality in which it ignores the Delta water quality to be improved by restraint of tidal flows and channel improvements, incident to the Cal-Fed program and a cross-Delta transfer facility. EBMUD has established comparatives which rely upon present Sacramento- American River conditions. These are irrelevant to the circumstances which will be in place when and if this project proceeds. Future Sacramento Sewage increases, treatment costs, relative flows and mingling of the American and Sacramento River and many other factors presently unknown will determine the viability of this project not present conditions uninfluenced by the Project operations, and changing circumstances in Sacramento. To obscure the memory of a once described "essential element" of the American River Project, a West Delta Reservoir, several alternative storage improvement projects have been publicized. One, enlarging Pardee Reservoir with its fundamental flaw of seismic integrity discovered during its original excavations, and second, the proposal to pump into and pump out of the presently overdrawn and contaminated San Joaquin underground pool. Even if these proposals had merit, they are still subject to aqueduct failures which could easily have been avoided by simply enlarging CCWD's Los Vaqueros and securing its improved water quality. The important factor is project cost and its financing. The serious potential of an expanded discriminatory rate structure, placing the principal burden of costs on political minorities as is the case of the present rate structure for single family domestic consumer. If the additional American River costs are to be borne by a political minority of consumers who require, not waste, a larger consumption, that future inequitable burden should be recognized in the evaluation of the American River Project itself. The indifference of the EBMUD Board to a fair and principled rate structure can best be measured by a currently considered $450,000 study proposal to add the multi-family consumer class, another numerically small group, to the single family group that currently and exclusively is charged higher rates for larger use. All other classifications, industrial, commercial, public agency and irrigation, which individually or collectively would have an effective political force to oppose such an extension currently remaining excluded from higher unit costs for larger volumes of use, simply because they have the financial and political power to resist it. One may well note the curious relevance of this EBMUD Board psychology to the turbid mind-set of the Vietnam War, where moral and rational judgment was stilled by a programmed habit pattern which no one in the decision process had the courage to challenge. John A. Nejedly Chair, Concerned Citizens for Improved Quality Water ne_22.doc