Hermosa Beach will soon charge residents a new, annual sewer fee. That is, unless local activists overcome long odds and get thousands of people to oppose the fee by next week.
On June 23, residents will have their last chance to oppose the fee by submitting their protest ballots at a hearing at city hall. According to state law, if a majority of the residences affected by the fee oppose it by mailing in or handing over 3,500 protest ballots, its imposition can be overturned.
The fee would charge homeowners and condo owners $115 and apartments $69 annually. Businesses will be charged based on water usage. All the revenue would go towards sewer repair. The fee has been proposed under Proposition 218, which allows cities to enact certain fees without a popular vote if the money is allocated for specific improvements.
Local activist Jim Lissner is among those who believe the fee is ill-conceived, and he’s been working to gather support for the idea that the sewer money should come from somewhere else.
“I don’t object to repairing the sewers,” he said. “I object to doing it this way … They don’t want to do the hard work of making the money, so they have this avenue where they can slam a fee down our throat and we can’t do anything.”
The sewer rehabilitation will cost about $11 million, with the initial $3 million coming from the city, according to staff reports. The other $8 million will come through loans that will be paid back by the sewer fee. The city hopes to iron out the financing details after next week’s protest hearing, then find a contractor and complete the project within seven years.
There’s little doubt the city’s 100 year-old sewer system is in need of work. The system consists of roughly 37 miles of mostly concrete and clay piping, along with 880 manholes. Along the system, there are numerous holes, leaks and invading tree roots. About three-fourths of the pipes are in need of repair, according to the public works commission. The city’s pipes flow from local pumping stations to a Carson treatment facility.
The sewer system has been modified over the decades, creating a patchwork of problems. For example, some homeowners have tapped into nearby sewer lines haphazardly and without permits, creating leaks. In other places, sewer lines run just a couple feet below roads and are damaged from cars and trucks passing overhead. Sometimes sand has come into holes in the pipes, causing a clog that can make sewage flow back “upstream,” through a home’s plumbing.
“Our sewer system is one of the modern marvels of the world until it comes into your home,” said Mayor Peter Tucker, who has worked on sewer repairs in the past as a building inspector and has pushed for the Hermosa sewer fee.
Also, sewage naturally erodes concrete pipes.
“Sometimes you’re amazed,” Tucker said. “It’s almost like the ground has created the enclosure. There’s no pipe. It’s completely disintegrated … You say, ‘Wow I’m surprised it didn’t fail a long time ago.”
The city hopes to do some of the repairs by threading a resin lining through the pipes, rather than digging the pipes out, which would be more expensive and disruptive to residents.
“Where we can do that, it’s the direction we want to go,” said Public Works Director Andrew Brozyna. “There’s less impact to the community.”
The city currently pays for sewer repair and maintenance through the 6 percent utilities tax, but sewers are often given lower priority than other infrastructure and services, such as road repair and money for police and fire departments. About $700,000 was budgeted last year from the utilities tax for sewer repairs.
The lack of a standalone sewer fee makes Hermosa an outlier among the Beach Cities. Manhattan Beach charges single family homes about $341 a year, and Redondo Beach charges about $195 a year. (L.A. County also charges its own fee for the maintenance of its pipes). Hermosa’s sewer fee would be paid along with property taxes.
The city council recently considered an alternative – annexing Hermosa’s sewer system into L.A. County’s sewer system, but decided against it due to cost and other factors. About $14 million of repairs were needed just to get the city’s system up to the county’s standards, according to a report from consulting firm Penco Engineering. What’s more, Tucker said the city’s employees can respond more quickly to problems than county crews.
“Our crews can be there in a half hour. With the county we’ve heard stories of ‘we’ll see you in a couple days,’” he said.
Still, opponents of the sewer fee believe the city can find better sources to fund sewer improvements. Lissner pointed to the ballot measure that will go before voters in November on whether to raise the hotel bed tax to 12 percent from 10 percent, which is expected to generate $440,000 of additional annual revenue to the city. He said the city council could have worked to usher in an even larger hotel bed tax that could have brought in more money for sewers.
One concern for residents is that the city has a number of other unfunded infrastructure projects, such as $44 million for the PCH-Aviation Blvd. improvements and $35 million for community center upgrades, and that more fees could come in the future. Still, Tucker said any new taxes levied to finance those projects would be voted on by residents.
Also, many residents expect a school bond measure to be proposed to voters in November. After the failure of Measure Q school bond last year, there is added pressure from activists to pass a bond this year to expand the school district’s facilities and help alleviate the overcrowding crisis at View and Valley schools. Lissner said adding a new sewer fee on top of the prospective bond measure could hurt the school bond’s chances of passing.
Lissner said he’s been encouraged to see some local residents recently speak out about the fee, but acknowledged that his odds of rallying thousands against it are slim.
“It would be amazing – a miracle – if we got the 3,500 things mailed in,” he said. “I see some life on this thing … [But] it’ll be a miracle if we get a majority protest.”
