Tustin is the latest city to hike water rates for residents this year, but they have a different reason than many of their surrounding cities – some of the drinking water might not be safe.
Due to concerns about chemicals called polyfluoroalkyl substances in the city’s groundwater, also known as “forever chemicals,” city leaders shut off five of the city’s wells, forcing them to import nearly half the city’s water from out of town.
While none of the city’s wells exceeded state regulations on forever chemicals, they were coming up near the limit, as the city also wrestles with leftovers from the Marine Corps Air Station Tustin base that might’ve poisoned much of the city’s groundwater over several decades of chemical dumping.
[Read: Homes Atop Former Tustin Air Base May Have Toxic Groundwater]
Tustin’s increase comes as other water districts throughout the county bump their rates to cover rising maintenance costs – residents in areas like San Juan Capistrano, Trabuco Canyon and Garden Grove will see various increases in the coming years.
[Read: Some South OC Residents’ Water Rates Double]
Tustin residents were already set to see a 4% hike next year, but will instead see a 9% increase for 2024 and a 9% increase every year after that until 2028 after city council members approved the new rates at their Dec. 5 meeting.
That’s a 54% increase in five years for the 14,000 customers of the city’s water district.
“No one likes to see rates go up,” said Councilman Ray Schnell during the city council’s discussion. “Really, it’s to ensure the health and safety of all the residents of Tustin.”
The city is also in the process of building a treatment plant to clean up the dirty wells, which is set to open next year.
Many of the residents at the meetings brought up concerns about the 9% raise over the next five years, urging city council members to commit to only two years of increases and then reassess.
“I’m getting ready to retire and be on a fixed income. Fifty percent increase?” one man said. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve never gotten a 10% raise every year, and I’ve had to live on my means.”
Tustin’s water system is still set to lose nearly $600,000 in operating costs next year even with the increase, but by 2028 it could be bringing in nearly $5 million a year, which is set to get spent on maintenance of the water system, according to the staff report.
Tustin Mayor Austin Lumbard also promised the city would not go beyond the 9% limit, and would reassess the situation every year to see if they could lower that increase while maintaining the necessary funds to keep operating.
“If we can fine tune them in future years, we will,” Lumbard said in a Monday interview. “We are going to mandate that the costs stay under that revenue level. If we have to defer capital projects to stay in that level over five years we will.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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