PROJECT GOALS, ACHIEVEMENTS, AND BENEFITS

The City and County of San Francisco is required to review its water and sewer rates every 3-5 years using an independent team. McGovern McDonald Engineers (MME) has been a partner on this team for the last three rate cycles. MME performed a comprehensive analysis of San Francisco’s water and wastewater rates, meeting with San Francisco finance staff regularly to understand current practices and formulate recommendations for future practices. They allocated capital and operations and maintenance utility costs based on wastewater function.

Following the determination of stormwater related costs to the system; MME led the analysis of the allocation of these costs to the major assets at the Southeast Plant, Oceanside Plant, the North Point Facility, and the collection system.

MME developed the novel allocation of stormwater costs associated with each of these assets to existing and new users, and ultimately developed calculated wet weather user rates based on various recovery methodologies. These include assessing a flat fee for stormwater, a fee based on gross area, impervious area, density, runoff coefficient, land use type etc. for each type of user (commercial, residential, etc.).

An assessment of the billing impacts to different customer classes was developed. Potential incentives and credit programs were developed to work in combination with the new stormwater rates. Based upon MME’s work, a long-term plan was developed for bifurcation of wet and dry weather rates. This analysis was the basis for the decision by the SFPUC to take a long-term approach to implementation of stormwater rates.

Public Outreach: As the City and County of San Francisco is increasing rates for their water and wastewater customers, MME assisted with the SFPUC Public Outreach team on rates education and outreach planning, including coordination and logistics of “Community Roadshows” and In-City Tours. These tasks require organizing and managing stakeholder and contact lists utilizing the City’s Salesforce software, tracking project timelines and workplans, coordinating materials for speakers, preparing specs for graphics, and managing presentation schedules, surveys, protest letters and calls, etc.