EBMUD Sets New Budgets

The EBMUD Board of Directors adopted a two-year budget on June 14, 2011 that emphasizes investments in maintaining the aging water and wastewater system infrastructure to deliver high-quality water and wastewater services. The $372 million operating budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2011 is a moderate increase over this year's $369 million water system budget. The FY13 water system operating budget was set at $395 million. The wastewater system operating budget was set at $89 million in FY12 and $93 million in FY13. Following a rigorous review that focused on investments needed for safety and regulatory compliance, critical capital improvement projects were identified and the budget for those improvements was set at $262 million for FY12 and $215 million in FY13.

EBMUD's new budget relies on employees foregoing union-negotiated raises for two years, a continuing hiring freeze, and sharp cuts in discretionary spending to keep costs down despite major increases in operating expenses for facilities and infrastructure maintenance and petroleum-based products like paving materials. The budget includes funds to pay rising debt service costs that pay for capital improvements such as the newly-completed facilities that will bring supplemental water supplies to the East Bay from the Sacramento River in drought, a seismic retrofit of San Pablo Dam, and expansion of recycled water service to more industrial and irrigation customers.

Effective July 1, 2011 the typical EBMUD residential customer will pay $40.98 per month for water service and $16.00 for wastewater service. Those charges are projected to rise to $43.45 and $16.94, respectively, in July 2012.

EBMUD is committed to providing high-quality water and wastewater services at fair and reasonable rates for the people of the East Bay.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: The documents below are PDF files which can be viewed and printed with Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free software.