The Goleta Water District is raising rates for its early adopters of recycled water who use the non-potable product mostly for irrigation.
To provide incentives for some large customers to make the move to recycled/reclaimed water, the district offered special-use agreements in the early 1990s, board president Lauren Hanson said.
“Those customers were some of the first participants in the district’s recycled water program,” Hanson said. “They received a rate structure that was meant to encourage them to switch from potable water to recycled water, which was at the time a new thing.”
Those customers are: the Sandpiper Golf Course, the Hollister Business Park, Santa Barbara County’s Goleta Beach Park, the Camino Real Limited Liability Corporation (for landscaping, Girsh Family Trust land and Dos Pueblos Little League) and the Goleta Union School District, which uses recycled water on its Isla Vista and Ellwood elementary school campuses.
The agreement for the business park property in the 7400 block of Hollister Avenue was made by the previous owner, the Santa Barbara Research Center.
Sandpiper is the largest user among these customers, and represents 29 percent of total recycled water use during the 2013-14 fiscal year.
Those rates have been unchanged since 2005, when they were set at $1 per HCF (one hundred cubic feet, or 748 gallons of water), which was the same as the agricultural rate at the time.
The water district board can increase rates to be level with the current agricultural rate, which is closer to the rate for other current recycled water customers, Hanson said.
The urban agricultural rate is $1.42 per HCF, which represents a 42-percent increase.
UC Santa Barbara’s rate agreement (currently at 80 cents per HCF) can be adjusted yearly for inflation, which the board also approved at Tuesday’s meeting.
The district expects to get $66,000 more per year from the increases.
“The six customers had already been contacted by GWD staff to alert them to last night’s agenda item and why it was being considered,” Hanson said in an email. “The board felt that making the change effective July 1 gives these customers time to adjust to the new rate.”
— Noozhawk news editor Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.