Golden State Water customers in Los Angeles and Orange counties were hit with a hefty increase in their water bills last year, and now, if the state approves the company’s latest request, those bills could climb 30% more by 2030.
That’ll mean about $25 more per month for the average residential customer.
Those customers aren’t alone, however. Such increases have become increasingly common in Southern California as utilities and water districts grapple with the broader economy, climate change, higher import and treatment costs and a never-ending battle against aging infrastructure, experts say.
Last year, researchers at UCLA found the water bill for an average household in L.A. County jumped nearly 60% from 2015 to 2025, outpacing inflation and straining low-income families.
That trend is expected to continue.
“Rates are definitely on the rise in a lot of areas,” said Grace Harrison, project manager of Water Equity Research at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. “That is a real challenge for customers.”
The new normal
Golden State previously received approval to increase rates across the board by 10.52% in 2025, 4.26% in 2026 and 4.07% in 2027.
Inglewood, which buys water from the West Basin Municipal Water District, approved a roughly 30% increase to its water and sewer rates last year after West Basin upped its prices.
In La Verne, water and sewer customers will see their bills effectively double by 2029.
Roughly a year after the Eaton fire, residents in Altadena fought against rate increases and fixed fire recovery fees.
Some cities are pushing back, too. Last year, a joint statement from Ontario, Montclair and Chino called a proposed 18% increase from the Inland Empire Utilities Agency a “stunning disregard” for “local economic realities” and accused the utility of sticking locals with the bill for a project benefiting others.
There are legitimate reasons why utilities might need larger increases, though that doesn’t make it any less painful for customers facing cost-of-living challenges across the board, Harrison said.
New regulations around forever chemicals like polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS; surges in the cost of imported water, particularly from the Colorado River; and the need for capital improvements to adapt to climate change and maintain water quality are all potential factors, she said.
“As the Colorado River basin has become more and more depleted, the price of water is going up and up and up,” she said.
Some public utilities also kept prices artificially low for too long out of fear of political blowback and are now forced to make more dramatic increases, she said.
“Water has been on the more affordable side when it comes to utilities and there really are genuine needs for rate increases in some cases,” Harrison said. “There are a lot of old systems that are really struggling to keep up with the cost of doing business.”
Caty Wagner, the water campaign manager at the Sierra Club California, said costs in the water industry also trickle down. When the Metropolitan Water District, for example, increases its wholesale prices, as it did in both 2025 and 2026, those down the line — which, directly, or indirectly, includes most agencies in Southern California — follow suit, she said.
Massive, multibillion-dollar projects on the horizon, such as the Delta Conveyance Project, or the Sites Reservoir, also can raise costs for everyone, she said. Customers should be pushing their local water boards and other representatives to support projects that will ween the region off imported water and expand local water storage and resiliency, she said.
It may result in larger rate increases in the short term, but the long-term benefits will outweigh those costs, she said.
“Climate change is here, it is not going away,” Wagner said. “Everything we can do to decrease reliance on water imports will help with the cost.”
What Golden State is proposing
Golden State Water serves tens of thousands of residents in the San Gabriel Valley, south Los Angeles County, and north Orange County, including Monrovia, El Monte, Pomona, Anaheim, Inglewood, Long Beach and Los Alamitos.
The investor-owned utility submitted its most recent rate proposal to the California Public Utilities Commission in July and indicated it would increase its spending on infrastructure projects by more than $180 million if the plan were approved.
In the San Gabriel Valley, that would include $21 million in upgrades to improve water treatment systems, water quality and system reliability, according to the company. The Placentia and Los Alamitos service areas would each receive more than $34 million in investments, including replacing two 1.5-million-gallon reservoirs at the Florista plant, officials said.
The proposed rates will be reviewed and scrutinized over the next year.
Weary consumers
The proposal sparked outrage on Reddit, and more than 230 public comments on the proposal have already poured in from residents urging the CPUC to reject the high rates.
“The cost of water is already too high,” a Monterey Park resident wrote. “Raising the water rates by 30% is predatory and extractive during this time of unprecedented inflation.”
“Please don’t do this, we are paying so much more now,” a Long Beach resident wrote. “Every month is a struggle.”
Paul Rowley, the senior vice president for Regulated Water Utility at Golden State, said the company does not take rate increases lightly. Customers should participate in the CPUC process and see where their money is going, he said.
The company’s prices are impacted by many of the same everyday costs that consumers experience. Even though water consumption is down 40% across the company’s footprint, water treatment systems, storage facilities and other critical infrastructure must be maintained regardless, he said.
Equipment failures
Proactively dealing with problems before a failure occurs will save money, he said.
He pointed to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s recent water main break and sinkhole in West Hollywood as an example of what can happen if maintenance is deferred for too long.
“We don’t believe in kicking the can down the road,” he said.
Golden State offers a customer assistance program for low-income families that may need it, he said.
Criticisms that the company is being greedy are unfounded, he said. Golden State does provide a return on investment to its shareholders, he said, but publicly owned utilities are similarly beholden to bondholders, he argued.
Golden State had a state-authorized rate of return — the amount of profit it can earn — of 7.93% in 2025, according to a press release. This year, its parent company announced its 72nd consecutive year of dividend increases.
Spending ‘excessive’
The California Public Advocates Office, which fights rate increases on behalf of customers, has already filed opposition to Golden State’s proposal, calling the company’s proposed spending “excessive.” The protest filing argues that ratepayers have already paid for some of projects included in the increase without seeing “any benefits.”
“The magnitude of this increase is unreasonable given the existing affordability challenges and the basic need of drinking water,” its attorneys wrote.
Gregory Pierce, director of the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab at UCLA, said such protests from the public advocates’ office are “very typical” now too and often follow a similar pattern.
Investor-owned utilities start with a “very high increase,” advocates and the public criticize it, and then it is negotiated down, he said. Golden State’s proposal for a 22.95% increase in 2025 in the last three-year cycle was more than halved in the end.
A final decision on the latest rates is not expected until Nov. 2027.