About Your Utilities
Utilities provides water, wastewater (sewer), drainage and solid waste (garbage) services to residents and business in the City of Sacramento.
By the Numbers
Your Department of Utilities:
- Serves more than 480,000 customers
- Delivers more than 38 billion gallons of drinking water to customers
- Pumps more than 37 billion gallons of wastewater (sewage, combined sewage and storm water)
- Maintains more than 2,000 miles of water and sewer pipes
Learn How Sacramento Handles its Water and Wastewater. Watch the Video Below.
Long History of Service
The Department of Utilities has been around for more than 100 years... growing as the city has grown... and now serves more than 480,000 customers with a variety of critical services:
- Water
- Sewer
- Storm drainage
- Garbage, recycling and yard waste collection and disposal
- Street sweeping
More than Just High-Quality Water From Your Tap
Utilities fulfills duties that aren't seen on a day-to day basis. Additional roles include:
- Regulatory compliance
- Protecting water rights and water quality
- Responding to sanitary sewer overflows to prevent discharges of sewage to local creeks and rivers
- Maintaining closed landfills to prevent pollution
- Overseeing the proper disposal of waste and recyclable items
- Investment for future improvements
- Maintaining adequate financial reserves to provide financing for long-term capital improvement projects
Challenges at a Glance
- Most pipes are nearly 100 years old and near failure
- Utilities' costs, outside its control, keep increasing, such as compliance, electricity, chemicals and fuel
- Regulatory and capital improvements are critical but are costly. Increasing requirements have left a smaller piece of the financial pie for improvements to aging infrastructure.
- Financial reserves have dwindled over the years, leaving less money for long-term or large-scale capital improvement programs
- Sacramento operates a water treatment plant that uses something called rapid sand filtration. It's the oldest of its kind west of the Rockies.
