Water and sewer service for a Clearlake Oaks home is set to cost $162.09 a month in base charges this year, up from $129.11, under a five-year rate schedule that was before the district’s board for adoption at a public hearing Tuesday morning — with written protests, by the district’s own count, running at less than half the number needed to block it.
The Clearlake Oaks County Water District hadn’t announced the hearing’s outcome as of Wednesday morning.
The increases, laid out in the district’s mailed Proposition 218 notice, take the combined residential base charge to $207.63 a month by the fifth year, a 61% climb over current bills before any water use is counted. The water portion rises from $52.66 to $69 in the first year and the sewer portion from $76.45 to $93.09. The per-unit charge for water actually used drops at first, from $2.28 to $2.15 per 100 cubic feet, before climbing back to $2.58 by the fifth year. Under the draft resolution before the board, the new rates would apply to service delivered on and after Sept. 4.
The protest math
Proposition 218 lets ratepayers block a rate increase with a majority protest — written objections from more than half the affected parcels. That bar sits at 1,079 of the district’s 2,157 water parcels and 893 of its 1,785 sewer parcels. The district’s tracking sheet, included in Tuesday’s board packet, logged 489 protest letters as of July 31 — 429 opposing the water increase and 405 opposing the sewer increase, less than half of what a majority protest requires. Protests could be submitted up to the close of Tuesday’s hearing, so the final count could run higher.
The hearing was originally set for June 18. The district continued it to August after, in the words of its June 11 notice, “receiving information that some residents may not have received the mailed notice.” The continuance pushed the proposed effective date back from July 1 to September.
Why the district says rates must rise
The district’s case for the increase comes from a pair of rate studies prepared by the Rural Community Assistance Corporation, a West Sacramento nonprofit. The water study was provided at no cost to the district through the State Water Board’s SAFER program. The water fund lost $99,418 in fiscal 2025 once loan payments were made, the study found, and was expected to lose another $134,569 in the fiscal year that ended in June. The sewer plan projects a $226,689 operating loss even in the first year of new rates, a gap it says was considered “to balance rate affordability for customers.” The district’s notice says its 2020 rate study raised rates just 2.5%, leaving revenue behind rising costs for insurance, electricity, treatment chemicals and new state mandates, including cybersecurity requirements and a cross-connection control program.
Affordability is where the consultant’s own tables do the talking. The district’s median household income is $31,169, by the State Water Board’s SAFER dashboard. The water study puts the average residential water bill at 3.15% of that income in the first year of new rates, rising to 3.8% by the fifth. The sewer plan runs from 3.58% to 4.79%. The State Water Board’s needs assessment classifies anything over 2.5% of median household income as high risk for affordability — a threshold each service crosses on its own.
A failing system and a $36 million question
Money isn’t the only thing the state has flagged. Clearlake Oaks County Water District has been on the state’s Failing systems list since March 25, 2025, and has carried a source-capacity violation — determined Sept. 15, 2021 — under the state waterworks standard. The district’s only active source is its raw-water intake on Clear Lake; state records show Well 1 and Well 3 inactive and Well 2 abandoned. The state’s risk assessment rates the district’s water quality risk as low: the issue the state has flagged is whether the system can keep up with demand, not the safety of the water it delivers.
Help on that front has been approved but, as far as the public record shows, not yet delivered. The State Water Board preliminarily approved a $36,060,258 Expedited Drinking Water Grant for the district’s water distribution, storage, booster pump and treatment improvements, and the district’s announcement anticipated an executed funding agreement “by May 2026.” May has come and gone with no announcement that the agreement was signed. The district cleared the project’s environmental review in March, adopting a mitigated negative declaration and filing its notice of determination March 24. Since 2017, the state has also directed $940,225 to technical-assistance providers working on the district’s behalf — money that pays consultants rather than construction.
The district serves about 2,100 water customers and 1,900 sewer customers in Clearlake Oaks and Paradise Cove, across 38 miles of water pipeline and 21 miles of sewer line. Its board next meets in regular session Aug. 20 — and the district has yet to announce the answer to the other money question before its ratepayers: whether $36 million in state construction funding is finally under contract.