Honolulu residents and business owners will once again face sticker shock this summer as sewer fees increase yet again – this time by 15 percent.
The sewer fee base charge for residents will rise from $59.47 to $68.39 per month. The non-residential base rate, which currently stands at $53.49, will increase to $61.51 per month.
Usage rates, which are calculated on a per one thousand gallon basis, are also going up.
The rate increases take effect July 1 and marks the final chapter in a ten year rate schedule designed to raise capital for wastewater and storm water improvement projects.
In 1995, after challenges by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, the city was forced to sign a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that called for sewer infrastructure upgrades through a twenty year period.
Three years ago Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann warned sewer fees could go as high as $300 per month if the EPA mandated secondary treatment at the Sand Island and Honouliuli wastewater treatment plants under the federal Clean Water Act.
Hannemann has maintained the $1.2 billion worth of upgrades at the two plants are unnecessary, pointing to evidence from local scientists that it would provide little to no benefit to the environment.
On Monday the mayor and the city’s Environmental Services Director Tim Steinberger met with EPA Region IX Administrator Jared Blumenfeld to discuss the proposed upgrades at the two plants.
“We had a very productive meeting and we look forward to making further progress in our negations,” Hannemann said in a press release. The mayor added Blumenfeld would visit Honolulu later this month to “continue to the dialogue between the City and EPA.”
The federal agency has not said when it would issue its final ruling on the proposed upgrades at Sand Island and Honouliuli.
PLAYING CATCH-UP
Honolulu Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi says Oahu continues to play catch-up with its sewer infrastructure after former Mayor Jeremy Harris raided more than $100 million from the city’s sewer fund to pay for nice-to-have projects like the beautification of Waikiki.
Kobayashi remember questioning the Harris administration about the legality of such transfers in 2002, her first year on the Council.
“I started going through the budget line-by-line and I said, ‘How come these things are being funded by the sewer fund?’”
Once Mayor Hannemann came into office in 2005, he immediately saw the need to begin an aggressive campaign of repairing and upgrading the island’s sewage infrastructure and pushed for further rate increases.
In the past five years Hannemann has spent $1.2 billion in sewer and wastewater infrastructure projects and has budgeted another $1.6 billion through the next six years.
However fee increases pushed by Hannemann in 2005 and 2007 were approved by the City Council during happier times, when Hawaii’s economy was booming.
Lowell Kalapa, the president of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii, says residents and businesses will be hard pressed to keep up with the latest sewer fee increase.
“A lot of businesses are struggling with increased taxes - the unemployment insurance tax (and) the possibility of the healthcare premiums going up. This is not going to be a pretty sight in the next two years.”
Kalapa believes the Council should consider shifting some of the burden of the next sewer fee increase to property taxes, that way businesses and residents could write-off some of the expense.
“At least the property tax is deductible,” said Kalapa, “whereas sewer fees are not.”
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