The court reaffirmed a lower court ruling on Wednesday that said charging residents for water at rates higher than it cost to provide was unconstitutional.
San Juan Capistrano is the focus of the case, but the city is far from an outlier in California, as tiered water rates are common in the Bay Area and elsewhere in the state.
While the tiered rates are aimed at reducing water use, the appeals court found it to violate the restrictions Prop 218 placed on such fees.
So what’s the real issue? In “publishing” the ruling, the decision gains legal weight. But there is that pesky drought to think about and State Executives made that clear.
Governor Jerry Brown said that the publication of the ruling put his mandates for lower water use into a “straitjacket” and Attorney General Kamala Harris urged the Supreme Court to “depublish” the ruling on the grounds that it is an “unnecessary and overboard” in wake, or lack thereof a wake, of the drought.
The Supreme Court rejected these requests without comment, leaving state and local officials to make do with the hand they have been dealt.
Tiered water usage is not down the drain however, as cities can get around the court’s ruling if they can prove that it costs more to provide the extra water.
Time for water districts to get creative.
For further reading on this ruling and more words in suggestive quotations, see "here".
Image Credit: Flickr User infospigot, https://flic.kr/p/qVZBT5 via (CC BY 2.0)