The $13 Billion Water Grab: MWD’s Secret Tax on Homeowners

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is a massive, unresponsive, and insular bureaucracy that lacks transparency and accountability to the ultimate end users, the Ratepayers. This includes homeowners, renters (through pass through rent increases), and commercial and industrial establishments. Rather, as a wholesaler to 26 agencies and another 251 subagencies, MWD and its directors are pressured to limit its rate increase so that these public facing entities do not have to raise rates to a level that reflects the true cost of water, fearing pushback from Ratepayers. MWD and its politically appointed board accommodate these agencies by dumping the increased costs onto property owners by levying a Special Property Tax that is buried in our Secured Property Tax Bill that only comes once a year.  This may be in violation of Prop 13.

A recent CityWatch article, Metropolitan Water District’s Billion Dollar Property Tax, indicated that MWD was proposing to increase this tax to $180 for a million dollar home (0.0018% of assessed value), a more than fivefold increase from the 2024 level of $35 (0.0035%).