Davis residents will pay three times as much to drink water, shower and garden in order to fund a $325 million project to bring Sacramento River water. Project leaders want to give ratepayers a heads-up to avoid sticker shock.

The Woodland-Davis Clean Water Agency will hold three meetings next week, two of them aimed at delivering basic information about the project: Why are the two cities doing it? How much will cost each resident? When will the rates increase?

The first meeting is 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 8, at the Woodland Community and Senior Center, 2001 East St., Woodland. The second is at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 9, in the multipurpose room at the Davis Senior Center, 646 A St.

The 16,400 Davis ratepayers will see their monthly bills more than triple over the next five years, from about $35 now to an estimated $109 in 2016, according to a city staff report released last week.

See The Enterprise’s May 27 story on how residents could protest the increases.

Bills will increase between $10 and $20 each year between now and then. The cities’ politicians say the project is the cheapest way to meet looming state standards for discharging wastewater.

If Davis continues to suck all of its water from highly mineralized underground aquifers, the water will fail 2016 state standards. The consequences of those failures could add up to $80,000 a day in fines, said Davis City Councilman Stephen Souza, who is vice chair of the Clean Water Agency.

“Our water is too salty for us to discharge into the environment,” Souza said.

The agency board, which includes two City Council members from each city, wants to make sure the public knows what’s going on.

“Our intent was always to make sure people knew what we’re doing and the impacts of the project,” said Eric Mische, agency general manager. “We’re there to share information with the public.”

“We probably haven’t done as good a job as we could’ve,” to get the word out, Souza said.

However, Davis officials have been trying to improve the city’s water for more than 20 years, he added, since it released a management plan in 1989. The city first applied for a Sacramento River surface water right 15 years ago.

However, “full-blown talks” about the total cost of the project and how rates would have to triple to pay for it didn’t happen until last year.

“We’ve talked about it, but we’ve never engaged in full-blown public relations to really let (the public) know what the project is, what the project will do for us and how much it will cost,” Souza said.

The agency has presented the project to 17 civic organizations, businesses and government committees since last August, according to Kim Floyd, agency spokeswoman. Those groups included the Davis Chamber of Commerce, Davis Kiwanis, Davis Sunrise Rotary and the Davis City Council. The agency also manned a booth at the recent Celebrate Davis! festival.

“We’re doing the best that we can,” Floyd said, “but I have no doubt that this will be the first time people have heard of the project.”

Next week’s meetings are part of the agency’s as well as the city’s beefed-up public relations campaign for the project. Future efforts will include a newsletter, five neighborhood meetings throughout the city, doling out information over the summer at the Davis Farmers Market and a website that includes a calculator residents can use to see what future bills will look like.

Residents will have to stomach higher rates, Souza said.

“I wish there was another path that was cheaper,” but the two cities looked at eight other alternatives, he said. Building infrastructure to draw water from the Sacramento River and deliver it to Woodland and Davis was the “least costly.”

Residents will save money, too, although not enough to cover their higher bills, he continued. Salty water stresses dishwashers and hot water heaters as well as washers and dryers. Residents will save some money in the long run, because they won’t have to replace them as often. Moreover, river water will make water softeners a thing of the past.

“Not a single person will need a water softener in our community,” Souza said.

People will save money on everyday stuff too, he continued. “Not a lot of people regularly drink our tap water,” because it tastes so bad. Some buy water filters for their faucets, have a filter built into a pitcher or buy bottled water. Surface water will taste a lot better, eliminating the need to purchase something else.

Officials crunched the numbers and tried to calculate the savings, which they estimate at $15 to $20 a month. Take that off the estimated $96 residents can expect to pay in 2016, and their bill comes out to $76, at best, or about 90 percent higher than what the average resident pays now.

Before the informational meetings, the agency board plans to move “full speed ahead” with “the basic guts of the project,” Souza said.

At their Tuesday board meeting, agency members will review the qualifications of five firms that applied to design the project. The meeting is scheduled for 2 p.m. in the Davis City Council Chambers, 23 Russell Blvd.

The firms in contention are Balfour Beatty of London, CGM Construction of Waterford, N.Y., CH2M Hill of Sacramento, Veolia Water of Paris and Aquacal JV.

They will whittle those five companies down to three on Tuesday. Those firms will come back with a design for 20 percent of the project. The agency then will select a winner to complete the project based on the design drafts.

— Reach Jonathan Edwards at [email protected] or (530) 747-8052.

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Davis and Woodland have joined efforts on a $325 million project to tap Sacramento River water and deliver it to the two cities. Officials estimate the price tag could increase water bills by more than triple over the next five years.

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