4. Discussion
As summarized in the Complaint itself, the complaint alleges9 a/an:
· Failure by [Company] to provide adequate notification and communication with the impacted customers of the huge increase in water rates;
· Unfairness of the tiered rates in targeting homeowners with yard landscaping without regard for the other high water users in the Los Osos valley;
· Failure of the tiered rate structure to make allowances for past usage patterns, or efforts at conservation;
· Increased risk of fire damage due to loss of yard irrigation;
· Discrimination against large families and high occupancy residences; and
· Lack of a critical need for draconian water conservation mandates in the Los Osos valley at this time.
Company's Answer denies that the subject rates are unfair, draconian, hazardous and discriminatory or that the notification was inadequate.10 Company's Motion to Dismiss contends that the Complaint fails to state a claim under the Public Utilities Code. The Company argues, in essence, the Complainants' grievances are with what the Commission has done within its authority not with any violation of the Public Utilities Code.11 Complainants have not responded to that argument.
We are granting the motion on a different ground, namely that the Complaint lacks ripeness. We made it clear in adopting the tiered conservation rate design on a pilot basis in Los Osos, and in three other ratemaking areas of the Company's District I, that the pilot would be reviewed in the company-wide GRC which is to be filed in July 2011.12 At that time the Company is required to provide information useful for an evaluation of the pilot conservation rate design. That GRC is the Commission-designated forum for hearing and evaluating ratepayer concerns over the design and implementation of the tiered conservation rates in the pilot programs in Los Osos and other ratemaking areas of the Company.
The Complainants did not participate in the A.08-09-010 proceeding13 from the time of its filing on September 15, 2008, through the end of the comment period on the proposed decision on May 2, 2009. Their Complaint on file now is untimely. We expressly chose not to have the pilot program at Los Osos reviewed in the District I GRC, scheduled to start in January 2010, because of the inadequate passage of time for evaluating its implementation.14 To undertake to evaluate it here, before there has been a sufficient period of implementation to collect data, likewise would be premature.
Although we are dismissing the Complaint here as untimely, we encourage Complainants to take advantage of the opportunity they will have beginning in mid-2011 to protest and/or comment on the Los Osos conservation rate design in the company-wide GRC. The quality of the evaluation of the pilot program will depend on informed input from them, other ratepayers, the Company, the staff of the Commission and the public.
9 Complaint, at 8.
10 Answer, at 7-12.
11 Motion to Dismiss, at 5-9.
12 Settlement Agreement, III.B. at 2, adopted in D.09-05-005, at 19, Ordering Paragraph (O.P.) No. 1, and augmented in O.P. No. 2.
13 The Company filed affidavits of newspaper noticing and mailing in Application proceedings A.080-09-010, representing compliance with the methods required for eliciting comments and protests from the public and ratepayers. On November 18, 2008 the Company filed an Affidavit of Mailing-Region I Los Osos Service Area, indicating that notice was mailed to each customer as to, among other things, how to obtain a copy of the application requesting authority to established tiered conservation rates and how to protest and comment. Complainants in particular find newspaper notice in this technological age to be inadequate, and state that many ratepayers have no recall of notice and that sufficient notice of the large water bills was not given in general.
14 Settlement Agreement, III.B.1, at 3.; see D.09-05-005, at 19, O.P. No. 1 and No. 2.
