BEAUMONT – The Board of Directors of the San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency voted at its meeting on August 3 to maintain its current tax rate of 18.5 cents per hundred dollars of assessed valuation for the fifth consecutive year.
The tax is required to pay the Agency’s share of debt service and operation and maintenance for the State Water Project, the system of pipes, canals, reservoirs, and pump stations that convey water from Lake Oroville to the Pass area. The Agency sells this water to local water agencies, who use it to replenish local groundwater basins.
The Agency is funding a major new pipeline, pump station, and reservoir in the Mentone area that will enable it to import its full entitlement of State Water Project water, and to deliver more water in wet years. The Agency’s portion of this facility is approximately $80 million.
“We have been working on this project for over a decade now, and we are nearing the finish,” said Board President John Jeter. “We are proud of the fact that we will be able to fund it without raising our tax rate any further. We have worked hard to keep costs down and to deliver the maximum return for the taxpayer dollar.”
Since 2000, while continuing to fund increasing State Water Project costs as well as the new facility in Mentone, the Agency’s tax rate has increased only nine percent. It remained at the same level from 2000 through 2010 before being raised to its current level in 2011. The Agency’s annual debt service payment in 2016 for the first time will exceed $20 million.
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San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency is one of 29 State Water Project contractors whose mission is to import supplemental water, to protect and enhance local water supplies for use by present and future water users and to sell imported water to local water districts within its service area extending from Calimesa to Cabazon in western Riverside County, California.
For more information, please contact General Manager Jeff Davis at 951/845-2577.
