Natural Perspectives

The City Council has started the ball rolling to impose a new user fee

to help pay for sewer repair and maintenance. They will hold a final

hearing on the matter on Aug. 20. Our crystal ball says they’ll pass the

ordinance.

That’s pretty dull. Who cares about an additional $5 tacked onto the

water bill? Especially since apartment and mobile home dwellers will pay

even less? Not me. It’s a beautiful day here in paradise and I want to go

for a walk in the park. But Vic says I should write about the sewer fees

first because our deadline is looming.

That’s going to present a problem. I know nothing about sewer fees,

and as Rhett Butler says in “Gone With the Wind,” “Frankly, my dear, I

don’t give a . . . “ You know the rest.

I thought about what Scarlett O’Hara would do in this situation. She’d

probably think about it tomorrow, because, after all, tomorrow is another

day. I began to see the root of the city’s sewer problem. Like Scarlett,

we’ve been planning to think about it tomorrow for too long. Tomorrow is

here. Our sewers are old. They need to be maintained and in some cases

replaced. Our sewer system is 100 years old in some parts of town. Public

Works is repairing it as best it can, but city staff tells us it’s going

to take about $5.6 million a year to do it right.

I had a brilliant idea. Or so I thought. I shouted down the hall to my

beloved spouse, “Honey, why can’t Public Works just take the money from

the general fund?”

“I don’t know,” Vic said. “Call Dennis MacLain and ask him. He’s Water

Operations Manager for Public Works.”

So I called him. He pointed out that the city has drawn on the general

fund to maintain and repair the sewers in the past, but that this work

must then compete with all the other needs of the city. Sewers sometimes

get short shrift. In these days of beach closures due to sewage spills,

we can’t afford to defer maintenance.

“The water funds are dedicated,” Dennis said. “The sewer funds should

be too.” He said that the $1.5 million that the department now gets for

maintenance simply isn’t enough. With all of us pitching in, the new fee

will raise about $5.6 million for repairs and maintenance, with an

additional $700,000 annually still needed from the general fund to cover

costs.

I wondered what they needed with all that money, so I asked. MacLain

replied that they service and maintain 28 sewer lift stations. If they

didn’t, raw sewage would back up into low-lying areas and flood houses in

many parts of town. Ewww. Who wants that?

MacLain said they also run machines to jet out blockages and vacuum

out blocked areas if needed. They ream out roots that have invaded the

lines, and handle disinfection in case of a spill.

“We want to keep the sewers running free and clear,” he said. I’ll bet

everyone else does too, even the whiners who are going to complain about

the imposition of a measly $4 or $5 monthly fee.

“We do periodic manhole checks to measure the depth of the flow to

make sure everything is running smooth,” he said. “We handle odor control

too.” Oh my God, you mean people actually go down into the sewers to, to,

oh, I can’t even think about it. That’s worth $5 a month to us, isn’t it?

MacLain pointed out that Huntington Beach was way in front of other

cities in slip lining our old, decrepit clay sewer lines and that we were

a leader in getting video cameras down there to monitor the pipes. This

isn’t free, folks. Services cost money. We are the ones using the

services, so we should be the ones paying for it.

Some have questioned the wisdom of a flat fee, however, and I agree

with them. Shouldn’t this fee be based on usage? Why should a single

person pay as much as a family with four kids? The more laundry you do,

the more dishes you wash, the more showers you take and the more toilets

you flush, the more water you send down the drain. It would be more

equitable to tie the sewer fee to water usage. Then people who conserve

and who don’t use the sewers as much won’t have to pay more than their

fair share.

Vic disagrees with me, as usual. He believes a flat fee is more

equitable because the volume of sewage people produce is not proportional

to water use once the usage for landscaping, pools and hot tubs is taken

into account. The only really fair way to assess sewer fees is to monitor

the volume of sewage produced, but that simply can’t be done.

I’m out of time and space. Like Scarlett, I’ll think more about this

tomorrow. For now, I’m off for my walk in the park, a walk that I trust

will be free from contamination from spilled sewage, thanks to the fine

folks in Public Works.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at o7 vicleipzig@aol.comf7 .