City of Lodi Finance Department / Public Works Water Utility

Provider briefing

How this utility’s billing works

City of Lodi Finance Department / Public Works Water Utility operates as a municipal department serving Lodi. Customers should use the provider’s current account-specific bill and official customer-service instructions as the final authority for deadlines, balances, and service requests.

The published water-rate framework is described as Hybrid structure: unmetered residential customers are charged monthly flat rates based on bedroom count, while metered single-family customers use increasing block tiers and a meter-size base charge. The March 2026 approved fee schedule lists single-family usage tiers of 0–11 CCF, 11–30 CCF, and over 30 CCF, plus separate uniform usage pricing for multifamily/non-residential customers. Lodi also maintains a drought-surcharge policy that can increase rates during a City Council-declared drought.. Bills are generated monthly. the city states that flat-rate residential water charges are billed monthly, and its utility-bill materials describe the monthly bill date and current billing period., and a typical residential cost reference is For a 3/4-inch metered single-family account using about 5,000–7,000 gallons (approximately 6.7–9.4 CCF), the March 2026 schedule implies roughly $31–$34 for water: a $23.92 monthly base plus $1.04/CCF in the first tier. The corresponding wastewater schedule is approximately $30.45 base plus $3.23/CCF, producing an estimated combined water-and-wastewater total of about $83–$95 per month before other utility services. Where a home remains unmetered, the published 2026 flat water rates are $35.90–$51.66 for one- through three-bedroom homes and wastewater flat rates are $32.42–$54.04, for approximately $68–$106 combined depending on dwelling size.. These descriptions are useful planning benchmarks; actual charges can change with meter size, usage, sewer averaging, local taxes, drought stages, or account-specific fees.

Wastewater and sewer calculation

Lodi uses both flat and metered wastewater billing while the meter retrofit is completed. The 2026 schedule lists flat wastewater charges by bedroom and a metered monthly service charge by water-meter size plus a usage charge of $3.23/CCF. For residential customers, wastewater usage is based on the winter-quarter average (WQA), calculated from December through March usage while excluding the highest month, because winter use better represents indoor flow entering the sewer. Non-residential charges use actual usage and, under the rate-study method, a WQA-based monthly amount can be established for the following 12-month period. The City’s published rate study targeted moving all customers to metered wastewater rates by July 2026.

Meter and infrastructure notes

The active California Drinking Water Watch record lists 26,124 service connections, including 17,397 residential metered and 8,874 residential unmetered connections. Lodi’s Water Meter Program reports more than 16,500 residential meters and about 1,600 commercial, industrial, and institutional meters installed. The City says the meters support electronic billing reads through a drive-by or walk-by device and are intended to transmit readings to a centralized computer; the meters also expose leak-detector flow information. The public pages do not publish a fixed monthly route-read date or a current AMI hourly-transmission specification, so the verified technology is remote-capable AMR/electronic reading with no public schedule stated.