Bakersfield is now facing what the rest of the State is facing—massive increases in sewage fees.
“Bakersfield wastewater manager Evette Roldan speaks to reporters on a tour of Wastewater Treatment Plant 2 on Planz Road Friday. The city recently proposed, and then rescinded, a roughly 300% increase on sewer rates officials say is needed to pay for desperately needed upgrades at the aging facility.
- Peter Segall / The Californian”
A 300% increase will be the final straw for some, forcing them to leave the city and State. This is part of the inflation problem of California and why the cost of living is so high.
We are watching the DOOM LOOP is real time. How soon before the State has an economic collapse?
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City looks to educate public on need for upgrades after pause on sewer rates
BY PETER SEGALL [email protected], 4/25/25 https://www.bakersfield.com/news/city-looks-to-educate-public-on-need-for-upgrades-after-pause-on-sewer-rates/article_676de1a4-f8a8-435e-a0f8-19d912fd0265.html
City staff said all the spouts on the mechanic arm on a trickling filter at Wastewater Treatment Plant 2 should be distributing water. But because of the age of the equipment, many were not functioning as they should.
- Peter Segall / The Californian
Bakersfield wastewater manager Evette Roldan speaks to reporters on a tour of Wastewater Treatment Plant 2 on Planz Road Friday. The city recently proposed, and then rescinded, a roughly 300% increase on sewer rates officials say is needed to pay for desperately needed upgrades at the aging facility.
- Peter Segall / The Californian
Sewage flows through the “grit chamber” at Bakersfield’s Wastewater Treatment Plant 2 on Friday. The facility is in dire need of upgrades but a recent proposal from the city to raise sewer rates roughly 300% received strong pushback from the community.
- Peter Segall / The Californian
“You shouldn’t be able to see those rocks,” Bakersfield wastewater manager Evette Roldan told a group of reporters on a tour of Wastewater Treatment Plant 2 on Planz Road Friday.
Even though Bakersfield officials moved this week to pause a proposal for raising local sewer rates roughly 300%, officials say the city’s infrastructure remains in dire need of upgrades and that an increase will have to come at some point.
City Manager Christian Clegg said Friday during a media tour of Wastewater Treatment Plant 2 that major improvements to infrastructure had been delayed for more than a decade and deferred maintenance had finally caught up with the city.
“Unfortunately, we waited too long to get at the issue and we’re now raising that flag and hope that the community can understand that if we delayed any longer, it would only make it worse in the long run,” Clegg said.
The city is looking at several hundred million dollars in infrastructure upgrades in the coming years, and current city facilities have deteriorated faster than was anticipated.
That information wasn’t conveyed to residents when they received notices in the mail informing them of a proposed major increase in sewer rates. Under the proposal, the annual sewer rate for a single-family home would have gone from $239 to $950.
Residents balked and the city was inundated with calls, emails and letters criticizing such a dramatic increase.
Staff recommended a pause on the proposal at Wednesday’s City Council meeting, and on Friday Clegg said the city would take the next several months to work with the community to find a path forward.
“It has never been our intent for the community to feel like they don’t have enough information, to feel like they’ve been left out of the loop,” Clegg said. “It’s never been our intent for the community to feel frustrated or insulted that we don’t understand or are insensitive to any of the challenges that our community members are facing.”
Driving much of the cost for the city is the aging Plant 2, originally built in 1958 and last updated in 2000. The plant’s equipment is deteriorating, outdated and unable to handle the projected growth the city is currently experiencing.
Repairs to the plant are becoming more expensive, according to Deputy Wastewater Manager Evette Roldan, and portions of the plant are deteriorating faster than projected.
Part of the issue is that much of the sewer infrastructure is submerged beneath sewage that flows nonstop, 365 days a year. Roldan said the city really doesn’t have a way to inspect that infrastructure until something forces it to stop the flow.
“We really don’t take these structures out of operation unless something else is scheduled or something forces our hands,” Roldan said. “And as soon as we really start looking at them, it’s going to lead us down a path of, we’re really going to have to consider a major upgrade to this facility.”
Roldan said two major incidents, one in 2018, another in 2022, forced staff to divert flows and allowed them to see just how deteriorated some of the buried piping really was.
Additionally, water conservation efforts in California mean that the sewage coming through the plant has less water in it than its equipment was designed for.
There are newer technologies available that could better treat the city’s sewage, and potentially lower operational costs, but that would require a major overhaul of the entire facility.
“We’re not in the sense of, ‘I’m hoping it’s not going to break tomorrow,’ but we really need to start planning right now,” Roldan said. “Otherwise, everything’s going to be done under a very critical and emergency situation where we do not want to be in that situation.”
Roldan estimated that to replace the Plant 2 facility as-is, “like for like,” would cost $100-200 million. But considering the growth the city is experiencing, it made sense to look at upgrading the facility as well.
City officials also said the cost of materials has risen since the COVID-19 pandemic. They have projected the cost of a new Plant 2 treatment facility to be $500-600 million.
“There’s still other significant needs that we’re going to be probably in another $1-2 million range,” Clegg said. “That’s why the rates we’re considering would raise significant revenue to address hundreds of millions of dollars of capital needs over the next 10, 15 years.”
Clegg said the city will likely take roughly six months to figure out a different funding plan for the upgrades.
“We’re thinking about six months to do a better job of reaching out to our community, explaining and sharing information about what is the issue that we need to address,” Clegg said. “Listening to the community and then pursuing deep analysis on all the alternatives that are available for us to solve this challenge.”
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