The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has undertaken a program to make it easier for community gardens to get access to water. Currently, it costs about $8,500 to install a new water meter at a site. Because of the high cost, many community gardens just tap into neighboring property and just pay as an additional user. This adds cost for the gardeners since they are paying for wastewater even though water used to irrigate crops is absorbed by the soil. In addition, the PUC is unable to track how much water is being used for urban agriculture vs. typical uses. As a result, the PUC has set aside $100,000 to waive most of the fee to install a new water meter and will not be charging community gardens for wastewater. This could lead to making it much easier for community gardens to sprout up around the city. However, the issue of space is always a problem and finding new locations has been found difficult. For more information on this issue, read the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) post. Data and information from this post was gathered from the SPUR blog.
