By Eliza Ridgeway

The city of Los Altos Hills is within days of completing a sewer agreement with the city of Los Altos, the culmination of five years of planning by both towns. The agreement will enable other sewer-related projects in the Hills, including refurbishing a town pump station, extending town sewer mains and annexing unincorporated areas that currently lack access.

About half the homes in Los Altos Hills connect to sewer lines, which feed into the Los Altos or Palo Alto sewer systems. The others rely on septic systems. These systems, which grow faulty with age, are “an environmental disaster waiting to happen,” according to Los Altos Hills City Councilman Mike O’Malley, who has a septic tank.

One of the council’s goals is to extend sewer mains such as those along Moody, Page Mill and Magdalena roads. About a third of the houses in the semirural town are located a half-mile or more from the nearest sewer main. A basic sewer hookup costs $8,000 in Los Altos Hills, but running a mile of pipe could cost $500,000.

Residents of unincorporated Los Altos Hills cannot connect to the town’s sewer system, as access currently requires annexation. O’Malley, who spearheaded the sewer agreement, said that unincorporated residents should be allowed to connect to the system during the annexation process.

“Once we ink a sewer capacity deal (with Los Altos), there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to hook up immediately,” he said. “That’s good government.”

In other action, the council decided Sept. 28 to stop actively pursuing a townwide undergrounding effort. Burying overhead utility lines to enhance neighborhood aesthetics would cost thousands of dollars per household. Recent polls commissioned by the undergrounding committee indicated that residents are not interested in raising taxes to pay such costs, either through a bond measure or a utility user’s fee.

Two pilot undergrounding projects, financed with money from PG&E, are under way along the town-owned properties at Byrne Preserve and the Little League fields. The small-scale projects are intended to familiarize the staff and council with the ins and outs of undergrounding. Construction on the two sites is scheduled to begin next summer, with PG&E overseeing design and engineering.

All new subdivisions, new homes and extensive remodels in town are required to underground power lines to the edge of the private property. About a third of the town’s roads have underground utilities already because of new subdivisions or private roads.