Grand jury urges steady rate hikes to keep water systems safe
The grand jury says steady water-rate hikes now could keep Fortuna and other aging systems from turning into the next Clearlake sewage spill.
The Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury is pressing local water and sewer agencies to keep rates rising on a regular schedule instead of waiting for failures to force steep jumps. In Flowing Forward: Funding the Future of Water and Sewer Systems, the 19-member independent arm of the Humboldt County Superior Court argues that predictable increases are the safer bargain for households and for the pipes, pumps and treatment plants that serve them.
The report points to Clearlake as the warning case. Lake County officials said a county-operated 16-inch force main ruptured on Jan. 11, 2026, releasing about 2.9 million gallons of untreated wastewater. The initial impact area covered about 58 properties and later expanded to more than 200 properties with private wells, with community updates, notices and town-hall planning continuing through January as cleanup and well testing moved forward.
In Humboldt County, the jury says McKinleyville Community Services District shows what a more deliberate funding plan looks like. MCSD’s rate materials say adjustments are scheduled each January through 2027, and the district identifies a 2022 Water and Wastewater Rate Study as its most recent rate study. Its water page says the wholesale water pass-through cost from Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District was $2.03 per CCF, effective July 1, 2025. For a household using 10 CCF in a month, that wholesale component alone would amount to about $20.30. The jury says MCSD’s water and wastewater budget is 46 percent larger than Fortuna’s, giving it more room to replace infrastructure and upgrade systems before emergencies hit.
Fortuna is the contrast case in the report, which says the city is still trying to escape a break-and-fix approach that leaves local systems patched after they fail instead of funded for long-term replacement. The broader backdrop is a county government already managing large spending demands, with Humboldt County’s proposed 2026-27 budget totaling $657.8 million. Against that scale, the jury’s message is blunt: if communities want dependable drinking water and sewer service, they have to accept smaller, regular rate hikes now rather than larger bill spikes later, after aging infrastructure starts to fail.
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