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SFPUC outlines projects, costs and constraints in response to proposed Bay-Delta plan
Summary
Assistant General Manager Steve Ritchie told commissioners that meeting the State Water Board’s draft Bay‑Delta requirements could require up to 900,000 acre-feet of new storage or about 100 MGD of additional supply, with capital costs likely exceeding $2 billion and rate increases of roughly 8–17% over 15 years.
Assistant General Manager for Water Steve Ritchie presented a multi-part staff assessment of how the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission might respond if the State Water Board adopts its current Bay‑Delta water quality control plan.
Ritchie said achieving the commission’s stated level-of-service objective in an extended drought could require up to 900,000 acre‑feet of new storage or approximately 100 million gallons per day (MGD) of new supply capacity. Staff identified candidate projects—Daily City recycled water expansion (estimated ~3 MGD), potable reuse with Silicon Valley Clean Water (6–12 MGD), partnerships with Alameda County Water District (5–10 MGD), Los Vaqueros Reservoir expansion, regional desalination (9–20 MGD range), and East Side purified water (potable reuse from the southeast plant). Together the projects on staff’s current list range from roughly 28 MGD to 50 MGD; additional projects would be required to approach 100 MGD.
Ritchie gave rough capital-cost ranges for proposed projects of about $1 billion to $1.25 billion per major project and said cumulative costs to reach ~50 MGD would likely exceed $2 billion, with annual operations-and-maintenance costs that could exceed $50 million. Staff scenario modeling suggests retail water-rate increases in the neighborhood of 8–17 percent over a roughly 15-year period, which Ritchie said translates to about $9 to $20 per month for an average single‑family residential customer by the end of that period.
Commissioners asked whether the rate estimates assumed grants or public financing (Ritchie said they did not) and whether the project list had been regionally vetted (he said many projects were developed through the Bay Area Regional Reliability effort with partners including East Bay MUD, Santa Clara Valley Water District and Alameda County Water District). Commissioner Moran pressed staff to clarify assumptions behind the 100 MGD figure; Ritchie said that figure is tied to contract-level and modeled demand scenarios and that the projects currently on the table cover roughly half of that need.
Ritchie also summarized a Sept. 24 NGO letter asking SFPUC to (1) arrange for an objective peer review of the fish‑production model used in FERC filings, (2) collaborate with NGOs on alternative supplies, and (3) publicly oppose federal interference with science-based regulation. Ritchie noted the model was produced under contract to irrigation districts for the FERC process and said any peer review would require coordination with the model owner. He cautioned that the projects face reliability, regulatory, contractual and financial obstacles and that development timelines can span decades.
