SEWER RATES UP 40% HOMEOWNERS TO PAY FOR SYSTEM UPGRADES.

Byline: Kerry Cavanaugh Staff Writer

Los Angeles City homeowners can expect their sewer fees to increase 40 percent over the next five years to pay for sewer-line upgrades mandated in a $2 billion legal settlement stemming from thousands of sewage spills over the past decade.

City officials said Friday that they need to raise $300 million above the Bureau of Sanitation's existing revenue to replace about 60 miles of sewer line a year, according to a stepped-up sewage-system repair outlined in the settlement.

Dealing with decades of deferred maintenance, the city had in recent years committed to a 40-mile-a-year replacement schedule that would cost roughly $1.7 million over a decade. That led to a 30 percent decrease in spills.

Sanitation officials will take a rate increase to neighborhood councils this summer, asking community representatives to support raising the monthly sewer charge by $1.75 each year for the next five years. The average household pays about $21 a month, a fee that has not increased since 1992.

``Everyone who owns a home knows you have to fix the plumbing,'' Mayor James Hahn said during a press conference outside City Hall. ``I don't think people are going to object to having fewer sewer spills.''

The city just raised water rates 11 percent and is likely to seek another hike next year.

The City Council also is asking voters to approve a $500 million bond issue on the Nov. 2 ballot to pay for urban runoff cleanup and cut pollution flowing to the ocean.

The bond would add $57 a year to the average property tax bill in the city.

In addition, a countywide measure to increase the sales tax by 0.5 percent to hire more police would cost the average family $91 a year if approved in November.

City leaders said the sewer-fee hike and the storm-water-runoff bond are needed to meet increasingly stringent water-quality regulations and upgrade an aging, inadequate waste-water system.

``These aren't choices, they are mandates,'' said Councilman Eric Garcetti.

More than 60 percent of the city's sewage lines are more than 50 years old but system repairs have been slow-going. Since the late 1980s, the city chose to spend more than $2 billion to upgrade the Hyperion Waste Water Treatment Plant and in recent years began fixing main sewage lines.

Water regulators said the smaller sewer lines are crumbling or blocked, causing an average of two sewage spills a day throughout the system.

The settlement ends six years of litigation, first initiated in 1998 by the Santa Monica Baykeeper and later joined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The groups sued the city, saying it was not doing enough to prevent raw-sewage spills, which numbered more than 4,500 since 1994, and sometimes bubbled smelly water into basements, neighborhood streets and out to the ocean.

The City Council initially chose to fight the charges, hiring law firm Bingham McCutchen to help handle the lawsuit and spending about $7 million in legal fees, according to City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's office.

The city changed course in 2001 and began looking to settle not only the sewer lawsuit but a city lawsuit challenging stringent new storm-water rules.

``We're putting an end to year after year of costly litigation against the environment,'' said Councilman Jack Weiss. Under the agreement, the Baykeeper suit had sought $550 million in penalties but settled for $800,000 paid to the U.S. Treasury. The city must pay $1.6 million for the environmental group's legal fees.

The settlement lays out roughly $2 billion in sewer-system upgrades the city must complete over the next 10 years, some of which the city already planned and some of which was added as a result of the settlement.

In the first three years the city must repair sewer lines in the San Fernando Valley that were damaged in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake and replace lines in the harbor and central city areas. Ultimately the city will replace 488 miles of line in the 6,500-mile system.

Kerry Cavanaugh, [phone]

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com

FEE AT A GLANCE

To pay for court-ordered sewer improvements, city officials propose to raise the monthly residential sewer service charge by $1.75 annually for five years. Based on winter water consumption, the fee amounts to $21 a month for the average household. So the monthly fee would go up to $22.75 in 2005 and end up at $29.75 in 2009. The fee now generates $375 million a year, of which $250 million goes toward major sewer-line and treatment-system repairs. The rest goes to routine operation and maintenance.

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FEE AT A GLANCE (see text)