Oxnard hears Kayagus rate outlook; city adopts 2025 Urban Water Management Plan

The Oxnard City Council received a detailed presentation from Kayagus Municipal Water District on June 16, 2026 outlining how changes at Metropolitan Water District and investments in infrastructure are shifting costs toward fixed charges and driving modest overall increases for retail customers.

Kayagus General Manager Christine McAffrey and Finance Manager Dan Smith told the council that Metropolitan adopted a two-year package that includes a new treated-water fixed charge and higher readiness-to-serve and capacity charges. Kayagus said those changes shrink the variable (volumetric) portion but increase the fixed charges Kayagus must pass through. For Oxnard the district estimated an overall all-in increase in the mid-single-digit range for 2027, depending on Oxnard’s actual sales volume and how peak-week allocation is calculated.

Why it matters: Metropolitan’s restructuring is intended to allocate fixed-system costs more fairly across member agencies, Kayagus said, but shifting costs onto fixed charges can increase bills for retailers whose recent usage declined. Kayagus also emphasized long-term challenges — aging pipelines and pump stations, evolving reserve policies, and the cost of resilience projects — and noted that local groundwater and the Kayagus-operated Lake Bard and wellfield are part of Oxnard’s contingency supply.

The council followed the presentation with questions about reliability if Metropolitan deliveries were reduced. Kayagus staff said the Lake Bard-wellfield system would provide at least several months of supply, noting Lake Bard’s about 10,500 acre-feet storage and dependence on wellfield pumping and customer conservation during prolonged interruptions.

Nut graf — the city also used the meeting to adopt its 2025 Urban Water Management Plan (UWMP) and Water Shortage Contingency Plan after a public hearing. Water Division Manager Chris Payton and consultant Spencer Waterman told the council the plan projects that Oxnard has reduced per-capita use sharply (about 97 gallons per capita per day in 2025) and is positioned to meet the state’s urban water use objective by 2040 through a mix of conservation, advanced water purification (AWPF), and groundwater recharge. Planners said they used a mid-range scenario (roughly a 28% reduction in groundwater allocation for planning purposes) to test resilience and that recycled water/indirect potable reuse and recharge are key near-term investments.

Supporting detail: The UWMP also requires annual assessments of supply and demand; staff said Oxnard has already met earlier state efficiency targets and that the contingency plan uses staged responses tied to measurable supply conditions. A single public commenter spoke in favor of the plan; the council adopted the UWMP and the contingency plan by unanimous vote (7–0).

What happens next: Kayagus said it will hold a public hearing for its 2027 water rates on July 1 and is preparing a cost-of-service study to refine allocations of the new fixed charges among purveyors. Oxnard staff and Kayagus will continue coordination on the allocation methodology and on resilience projects such as groundwater banking and brackish groundwater optimization studies.

Ending: For residents, the immediate takeaway is modest projected rate increases for 2027 and the continued emphasis on conservation and local resilience projects that aim to reduce the city’s vulnerability to supply disruptions.