During a March 2025 Marin Water Board of Director’s meeting, the Board approved an update to the District’s capacity charges, which became effective on all completed water service applications received by the District on or after July 1, 2025.
The Board action came after Marin Water staff spent months working with an experienced independent public financial advisor to update the District’s capacity charges, which were last updated in 2018.
Capacity charges are one-time fees, paid as a condition of initially connecting to the water system or upgrading an existing water service. Capacity charges are designed to recover the reasonable costs of water system infrastructure and assets benefiting new or expanded water connections that are of proportional benefit to the person or property being charged. Marin Water, in consultation with its public financial adviser, developed capacity charges based on water meter size.
The 2025 Water Capacity Charge Study recommended changing from the current practice of estimating water demand on a per acre-foot of annual water demand for customers to utilizing industry standard meter equivalent units (MEUs) for each water meter size as established by the American Water Works Association. MEUs represent the capacity needed to serve a particular water meter size. Since larger water meters place a higher demand on the District’s infrastructure, utilizing the MEU methodology will ensure that customers are proportionally assigned more MEUs as their meter sizes increase to recover the District’s cost associated with meeting those higher capacity water system demands.
For more detailed information, review the Capacity Charge Study, which illustrates that the charges do not exceed the estimated reasonable cost of providing the service. A hard copy of the study is also available in the Office of the Board Secretary located at the District’s Administration Building, 220 Nellen Ave., Corte Madera, CA 94925, for review during normal business hours.
- Review the current Schedule of Rates, Fees and Charges by visiting the Development Services page.
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