WATER FEE HIKES IN WORKS NEW HOMES WOULD COST AN EXTRA $8,400.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Write

LANCASTER - New homes built in much of Lancaster and west Palmdale could get tagged with about $8,400 in new and increased fees as Los Angeles County Waterworks officials try to raise money to head off looming water supply problems.

The proposed increase would boost by 74 percent developer fees that hadn't been raised since 1985, as well as impose new fees to pay for storing water underground and for building a new pipe network for using treated, disinfected sewage effluent as irrigation water.

``We have to be certain we can have adequate water for a growing Antelope Valley, both for existing customers and for new ones,'' said Paul Novak, an aide to county Supervisor Michael Antonovich.

A hearing on the proposed fees is scheduled March 22 before the Board of Supervisors in Los Angeles.

A hearing scheduled for Tuesday was delayed after county officials said they wanted to further study the potential cost of buying imported water.

Antonovich wants to be certain there is proper justification for the fees, Novak said.

The higher fees on new homes are proposed as the Antelope Valley's underground water supply dwindles because of population growth and renewed farming. Water officials, independent well owners and farmers are gearing up for a court fight over rights to pump the water.

Water officials also face increasing costs for treating drinking water under tightening state and federal health standards.

Local home-builders are studying the proposed fees and expect to speak at the March 22 hearing, said Gretchen Gutierrez, executive director of the Building Industry Association's Antelope Valley chapter.

``It's going to increase the pricing on residential construction. The long-term effect is kind of hard to tell because the housing market is holding pretty strong,'' Gutierrez said.

Waterworks officials last year held up issuing permits for thousands of proposed new homes in Lancaster and west Palmdale housing tracts - without formally declaring a halt to building - because of uncertainty over the water supply. They resumed giving permission in January, but have been warning homebuilders of the impending new fees.

The fee increases would apply only to new home construction, not to existing homes.

Supervisors last month raised waterworks customers' water rates more than 33 percent. Those new customer water rates include three tiers of prices - conservation, normal and excessive - in which water gets costlier as a homeowner uses more each month.

The existing developer fees, which pay for installing water tanks and pipelines needed to serve new neighborhoods, are proposed to go up from about $4,000 a home to about $6,500 a home, though that may change with further study.

The proposed new fees would add another $5,900 per home. They will pay for building spreading grounds for storing California Aqueduct water underground in wet years, for drilling wells and for building a recycled-water distribution system to irrigate golf courses, parks and street landscaping.

The waterworks district serves more than 50,600 homes and businesses in much of Lancaster and west Palmdale, as well as about 7,200 customers in areas of Lake Los Angeles, Pearblossom and other parts of the valley.

If 1,800 new homes are built annually inside the waterworks district boundaries, the district will need $103 million to drill new wells, store aqueduct water underground and build a $22 million recycled-water system, county officials said.