The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) provides water and wastewater services to San Francisco residents. The SFPUC is committed to providing water and wastewater at an affordable rate to its customers.

This measure represents the cost of water and wastewater rates relative to the median income in San Francisco. The SFPUC strives to keep average customer bills for water and wastewater to less than 1.5 percent of an average household income for a single-family home.

AVERAGE PERCENT OF SAN FRANCISCO MEDIAN INCOME SPENT ON WATER AND WASTEWATER PER FISCAL YEAR

How Performance is Measured

The Sewer System Improvement Program (SSIP) is SFPUC’s 20-year, multi-billion dollar investment in upgrading the city’s aging sewer infrastructure so that it is seismically safe and reliable. This program includes specific goals and levels of service that the SFPUC has set to guide project selection and evaluate program implementation. This includes maintaining ratepayer affordability, and the SFPUC has pledged to keep customer bills less than 2.5 percent of an average household income for a single-family home throughout the multi-phased SSIP implementation. For water and wastewater specifically, the SFPUC's goal is to keep average customer bills below 1.5 percent of average household income for a single-family home.

Utility bills reflect the cost of SFPUC’s efforts maintain assets in good working order, encourage conservation, and cover costs associated with the extraction, treatment, distribution, and delivery of water, as well as the treatment and disposal of wastewater, and delivery of power. Rates are set four years at a time.

This measure is determined by calculating the annual average household bill. Median income comes from the City and County of San Francisco’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) and is adjusted for inflation. Figures are calculated for 1) Water, Wastewater individually, and 2) combined Water and Wastewater.

Additional Information

• Learn more about SSIP Goals and Levels of Service.
• Learn more about San Francisco's rate schedules and fees for water, power, and sewer services.

Data

Visit DataSF to access the scorecard data.