II. DETAILED SUMMARY OF THE MATTER THE PLAINTIFF SEEKS TO VALIDATE: Plaintiffs are wastewater customers of the City of Modesto. Plaintiff Stanislaus Food Products Company (“SFP”) operates a tomato processing plant during the summer canning season. Prior to 1999,  all of SFP’s wastewater was treated by the City of Modesto at its primary and secondary treatment facilities. In 1994, the City adopted a Wastewater Master Plan which concluded that canner wastewater was suitable for direct land application and did not have to be transported to,  and treated at the City’s primary and secondary treatment facilities. The City therefore constructed the Canner Segregation Line (“CSL”) to transport cannery wastewater directly to a 2,700 acre ranch owned by the City and leased to a third party. The CSL was put into operation in  1999. Since then, cannery rinse water has substantially bypasses the primary and secondary treatment plants. These flows are instead sold by the City as irrigation water to the tenant of the 2,700 acre ranch, resulting in a profit for the City. By diverting SFP’s rinse water, the City  substantially increased capacity at its treatment plant, which saved the City millions of dollars it would have spent to expand the plant. By avoiding treatment of the cannery wastewater, the City has also saved itself millions of dollars in treatment costs. Despite these savings and  profits, the City continues to charge SFP a sewer rate that includes a share of the full cost for operation and maintenance of the primary and secondary treatment plant and other facilities. This overcharge, past, present, and future, is the basis for this Complaint. For approximately the  past 6 years, the City has charged sewer rates that do not differentiate the cost of service by class of user, which Plaintiffs allege results in an overcharge to the CSL users, in violation of the law, specifically Article XIIID, section 6 of the California Constitution. The rates being collected  today were adopted by the Modesto City Council on or about April 12, 2011, when it approved an annual increase at the maximum rate proposed under a five-year schedule of potential increases that the Council adopted on or about May 25, 2010, by Resolution No. 2010-222. The  new rates took effect July 1, 2011. Plaintiffs seek a judgment invalidating the wastewater rates that took effect on July 1, 2011 as applied to Plaintiffs; and seek a judgment and declaration that the City may only bill Plaintiffs for the proportional costs of sewer services provided to, and  actually used by, Plaintiffs, and that rates charged in excess of this amount were and are unlawful. Plaintiffs also seek a refund, in an amount according to proof, of the amount Plaintiffs were overcharged by the City for the three years prior to September of 2011. Plaintiffs also seek an  injunction commanding defendant to cease overcharging Plaintiffs, as well as recovery of costs and attorney fees.