October 30, 2002

Yes on A and E

BOTH SIDES IN the bitter battle over the reconstruction of San Francisco's water system agree on the basic issue: large portions of its 1,530 miles of pipes, 60 miles of tunnels, and 23 reservoirs badly need repair. For years city officials have sucked revenue out of the Hetch Hetchy Department of Water and Power to meet General Fund needs, and there's been nothing left over for maintenance. In a serious earthquake – a virtual certainty sometime in the next 30 years – pipes could burst, tunnels collapse, and dams crack – and the supply of fresh water to more than two million Bay Area customers would be at risk.

There the consensus ends – and politics begins. An unlikely coalition of landlords, tenants, and environmental groups is opposing Proposition A, which would authorize the city to sell revenue bonds worth $1.6 billion to rebuild and upgrade the water system. The bonds would be repaid by raising water rates – in some cases, rates would as much as triple over the next 13 years. Landlords think tenants should pay the whole cost of higher water rates; tenants think landlords should pay it all. Neither side likes the compromise engineered by San Francisco Board of Supervisors president Tom Ammiano, under which landlords and tenants would split the cost.

The Sierra Club doesn't like the plan because, club members argue, it calls for expanding system capacity – and will thus help spur more water-dependent suburban development on the peninsula and the coast. The club's real agenda, though, goes beyond that: the group wants the city to tear down the Hetch Hetchy dam, and when city officials refused to fund a demolition study, the Sierra Club began working against Prop. A.

We agree with the critics on one level: This is not a perfect measure, and it's not the best way to go about fixing the system. Prop. A should have been part of a comprehensive public power and public water measure. After all, revenue from a public power agency could easily fund much of the repair costs without raising water rates. And we agree with the tenants: landlords (who are, almost without exception, doing just fine in San Francisco) should foot the whole water bill.

But with those reservations, we're supporting Prop. A. The Hetch Hetchy system is a civil treasure as well as a crucial part of the public infrastructure. It also serves a lot of customers outside the city, who currently have no say in its management – and if San Francisco can't keep it in good repair, the pressure on the state and federal level to take control away from the city will become increasingly intense.

The Sierra Club hasn't convinced us that Prop. A would fuel suburban sprawl. A key issue, the club asserts, is the expansion of the Calaveras Reservoir – but the Capital Improvements Plan the bond act is based on lists as many as 10 different alternatives for that reservoir, only one of which would expand its capacity to the level that concerns environmentalists. And the Board of Supervisors can still nix the final plan. There are no additional pipelines going to Silicon Valley, and the new pipelines on the peninsula are necessary for system reliability and maintenance.

It's easy – and tempting – to argue that the bond act is just too large, that the city should start with a few smaller projects. But the truth is, in the long run a larger bond will cost the city less (the interest rates will be lower), and with approval up front to spend the necessary money, the city can do a long-term plan for the renovation and upgrade, instead of approaching it piecemeal.

Proposition E, which is a companion to Prop. A, lifts the existing freeze on water and sewer rates (which has helped create the maintenance problem) and gives the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, with approval from the Board of Supervisors, the authority to issue revenue bonds for improvements to the water or power system – something virtually every other public utility in California already has.