Sewer Rates
The City of Pleasanton is committed to maintaining equitable and justifiable rate structures that support the needs of the sewer system and ensure long-term financial sustainability. Pleasanton’s sewer system is funded through a separate Sewer Enterprise Fund, which covers all sewer-rated services and infrastructure exclusively. These funds cannot be used for water services, projects, or other general city expenses.
Pleasanton has taken a phased and thoughtful approach to funding the future of our water and sewer systems, balancing infrastructure needs, financial stability, and the impact on our community. The City’s rate-setting process is transparent, compliant with legal requirements, and informed by community input.
The City is currently reviewing its sewer rates. Similar to the water rate setting process, the City is implementing a three-step approach to ensure sewer rates accurately reflect the actual system needs while maintaining consistency and financial health:
Step 1: Update the City’s Sewer System Management Plan (SSMP) and develop a long-term capital improvement plan.
Step 2: Perform a financial analysis and create a financial plan to serve as the basis for the sewer rate study.
Step 3: Prepare a Sewer Rate Study and Cost-of-Service Analysis to identify recommended rates, changes to the rate structure, and related fees.
2026 Sewer Rate Update
To ensure financial sustainability as the City implements its SSMP, the City is conducting a 2026 Sewer Rate Study. The goal of the study is to establish cost-based, fair, and legally compliant rates and connection fees to support the City’s sewer operations, maintenance, and capital improvements.
On February 17, 2026, the Pleasanton City Council reviewed and approved the long-term financial plan developed as part of the sewer rate-setting process. The financial plan evaluated multiple funding scenarios at different levels of near-term investment and assessed their impact on long-term system risk.
After reviewing the analysis, the City Council selected the “Maintain” scenario as the preferred approach. This scenario was selected because it reflects a balanced strategy that addresses high-priority infrastructure needs while sequencing other improvements over time to responsibly manage costs and long-term risk.
The Council also directed staff to return with additional rate modeling before finalizing any proposed sewer rate adjustments. Councilmembers acknowledged both the significant infrastructure needs identified in the SSMP and Sewer Capital Improvement Program (Sewer CIP) and the importance of carefully considering the impact on customers.
Next Steps:
The Pleasanton City Council is scheduled to consider the proposed sewer rate structure, sewer rates, and updated sewer connection fees at a public hearing on Tuesday, June 2, 2026.
The proposed adjustments are intended to support implementation of the Sewer Rate Study and ongoing investment in the City’s sanitary sewer infrastructure system.
Any proposed sewer rate adjustments will be subject to a public review process in accordance with Proposition 218 before adoption. Ongoing updates will be posted to this webpage as they are announced. To stay informed about the sewer rate setting process, sign up for the Pleasanton Pipeline Quarterly e-Newsletter.
Questions About the Sewer Rate Study?
Find answers to common questions about the City’s sewer rate study, sewer rates, infrastructure needs, and wastewater system funding.
Why is a sewer rate study necessary?
A sewer rate study is necessary to ensure that sewer service rates remain financially sustainable, legally compliant, and sufficient to maintain reliable wastewater service for the community.
The study evaluates the actual cost of operating, maintaining, repairing, and replacing the City’s aging sewer infrastructure, while also accounting for increasing regional treatment costs charged by Dublin San Ramon Services District, inflation, regulatory requirements, and long-term capital improvement needs.
Sewer systems require continuous investment to prevent pipe failures, sewer overflows, service disruptions, and costly emergency repairs. Much of Pleasanton’s sewer infrastructure was installed decades ago and must be rehabilitated or replaced over time to maintain system reliability and meet state environmental regulations.
The rate study helps the City:
- Determine whether current revenues are sufficient to cover operating and maintenance costs
- Plan for future infrastructure replacement and rehabilitation
- Ensure rates are fair, proportional, and compliant with California legal requirements for utility fees
- Avoid sudden large rate increases by implementing gradual, predictable adjustments over time
2. When was the last time Pleasanton conducted a sewer rate study?
The last comprehensive sewer rate review was completed in 2022, when the City adopted the current sewer rate schedule and authorized annual adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rather than conducting a full cost-of-service reevaluation each year.
Since then, Pleasanton’s local sewer rates have generally been adjusted annually through CPI-based increases to keep pace with inflation and routine operating cost changes. For example, the current 2026 local sewer rates reflect a 2.48% CPI adjustment.
The City is now conducting its first comprehensive sewer rate study since 2022 as part of the broader sewer financial planning process. According to the City’s sewer rate update webpage, this 2026 study is evaluating long-term system needs, updated capital improvement requirements identified through the Sewer System Management Plan (SSMP), regional treatment cost impacts, and overall financial sustainability to establish rates that are cost-based, legally compliant, and sufficient to support the sewer system over the next several years.
3. Why is it important that Pleasanton conduct a comprehensive sewer rate study now?
Pleasanton needs to conduct a comprehensive sewer rate study now to ensure the City’s sewer system remains financially sustainable, operationally reliable, and fully compliant with state regulatory requirements governing wastewater systems.
A key driver for this timing is compliance with the State Water Resources Control Board’s requirements under the Sewer System Management Plan (SSMP) framework. The SSMP requires agencies like Pleasanton to not only maintain and operate their sewer systems properly, but also to demonstrate ongoing financial and capital planning capacity to support system maintenance, rehabilitation, and spill prevention. In other words, regulatory compliance is not limited to field operations. It also requires that the City have a documented, sustainable funding strategy to implement the SSMP over time.
Since the last comprehensive rate study in 2022, several critical conditions have changed, including updated pipeline and facility rehabilitation needs identified through SSMP implementation, inflationary increases in construction and maintenance costs, and rising regional treatment costs from Dublin San Ramon Services District. These factors directly affect the City’s ability to fund required SSMP activities, including sewer inspection and cleaning, asset renewal, condition assessment, emergency response preparedness, and capacity rehabilitation projects.
While annual CPI adjustments help maintain short-term financial stability, they do not access whether rates are sufficient to meet the full scope of SSMP obligations, particularly long-term capital renewal and regulatory risk-reduction needs. A comprehensive rate study is the mechanism that ties the SSMP requirements to a defensible cost-of-service analysis and ensures the City can demonstrate adequate financial capacity during State audits or regulatory reviews.
Conducting the study now allows the City to:
- Demonstrate compliance with SSMP financial and implementation requirements under State regulations
- Align sewer rates with updated SSMP-driven capital improvement needs and asset renewal schedules
- Reduce regulatory risk by ensuring adequate funding for spill prevention and system reliability
- Address funding gaps proactively rather than reactively under regulatory pressure
- Maintain transparent, equitable, and legally defensible rates based on the cost of service
- Avoid sudden rate shocks by planning gradual adjustments aligned with long-term SSMP obligations
4. What does the sewer rate pay for?
Sewer rates fund the full cost of providing safe, reliable wastewater service from the moment wastewater leaves a home until it is treated and safely discharged to the environment.
Sewer rates support system-wide requirements such as:
- Regulatory compliance and reporting under State and federal wastewater permits
- Long-term planning and capital investment to replace aging infrastructure
- Emergency preparedness and response capabilities to protect public health and the environment
- Collect wastewater from homes and businesses
- Transport it safely through the sewer system
- Treat it to strict environmental standards
- Return clean water safely to the environment
These costs are essential because sewer service is a continuous 24/7 utility that depends on both the City’s local infrastructure and regional treatment infrastructure operated by DSRSD or Livermore.
In Pleasanton, sewer rates are generally divided into two major parts: local collection system costs and regional treatment costs provided by the Dublin San Ramon Services District.
Locally, sewer rates pay for the operation, maintenance, repair, and replacement of the City’s sewer collection system. This includes approximately hundreds of miles of underground sewer pipelines, manholes, lift stations (where applicable), routine sewer cleaning and inspections (including closed-circuit TV inspection), root control, emergency response to sewer blockages and overflows, regulatory compliance under the State’s Sewer System Management Plan (SSMP), and long-term capital improvements needed to rehabilitate aging infrastructure and prevent failures.
At the regional level, sewer rates also fund wastewater transport, treatment, and disposal once flows leave the City system to the DSRSD Treatment Plant or the Livermore Treatment Plant. This includes operating regional interceptor pipelines, running advanced treatment processes to meet state and federal water quality standards, managing biosolids, maintaining treatment plant facilities, and ensuring compliance with environmental discharge permits.
5. What do the sewer fixed rate and variable rate pay for?
A fixed rate recovers costs that exist regardless of how much wastewater a household generates. These are the ongoing costs to maintain the sewer system infrastructure, so it is available 24/7, including pipe maintenance, inspections, staffing, emergency response readiness, and capital replacement planning. Pleasanton’s residential sewer charge is structured as a fixed charge because these collection system costs are largely independent of day-to-day water use.
A variable rate is more closely tied to wastewater volume or water consumption and reflects costs that change with system usage. Treatment costs at the regional level are more sensitive to flow volumes because higher flows require more pumping, treatment chemicals, energy use, and processing capacity. This is why regional treatment charges are more closely linked to usage-based cost allocation.
6. Why are there multiple sewer fixed rates and what do they pay for?
The Dublin San Ramon Services District collects DSRSD treatment charges and covers the regional treatment of wastewater after it leaves Pleasanton’s local sewer system. This charge is primarily based on wastewater treatment costs at the regional level, including operating and maintaining the treatment plant, regional interceptor pipelines, regulatory compliance, environmental discharge requirements, and major capital improvements needed to treat wastewater safely and reliably.
The Pleasanton fixed residential sewer charge of $30.77 is a local City charge that supports the collection system within Pleasanton before wastewater reaches DSRSD. This funds the operation, maintenance, inspection, cleaning, repair, and replacement of the City’s local sewer mains, manholes, emergency response activities, regulatory compliance, and long-term infrastructure rehabilitation.
Residents at Ruby Hills pay Livermore treatment charges, because the sewer system connects to the Livermore sewer treatment plant.