SD Realtor, thanks for that insight. I figured they had some sort of plan in place…at least on paper. This reminds me of the sewer spills that frequently occur in San Diego. There are preventive maintenance steps, and predictive deterioration models that can be performed to gauge how bad pipes are and when they will need to be replaced. If there is no data for this, a replacement schedule is implemented whereby x feet of pipe are methodically replaced every so often. Other methods include in situ repairs such as re-lining the pipes and filling the voids. The main point is that I don’t think that San Diego can just keep raising the sewer rates to compensate for the deteriorating pipes. Ongoing maintenance and replacement should already be factored into the monthly sewer rates. In other words, the City has a financial incentive to proactively maintain their pipes because letting them go to waste and replacing them is much more expensive. The oil companies, on the other hand, just increase the cost per barrel to offset any lack of foresight on their part.
