Water Surcharge

I never appreciated not having to pay for water. Now I dread the day when the water bill gets posted. EBMUD has been adding a drought surcharge since August of last year, coincidentally around the same time I moved into my current apartment. Having never paid a water bill before, I thought the amount was high, but not unbearable, so I simply wrote the check and thought nothing more of it. Now that money is tighter, I decided to take a closer examination into how the water bill is broken down.

Each residence is given a limit on water usage, based upon usage at that residence for the previous three years. The obvious flaw in this plan is that, particularly around a university, apartments change hands on a yearly basis. Suppose the previous occupants of your residence didn't bathe on a regular basis. Your quota would be based upon levels far below what any person with reasonable hygine would actually need. Also suppose you move into a residence formerly occupied by someone who had a small marijuana plantation in their closet. If this were the case you could run the water for half the day and it wouldn't make a difference. Because of the wide range of previous tenants, basing usage quotas on residential predecessors indiscriminately gives some people fiscal breaks while causing others to pay through the nose for behavior which may conform to reasonable drought behavior.

Furthurmore, the utility district attempts to make amens for this by giving every account that uses less than 100 gallons/day an $0.18/unit discount on their bill. The folly with this plan should also be obvious . A studio apartment with only one resident would have an easy time meeting the criterion for the discount, while a group of people living in a multi-bedroom residence would be practically inelligible for this discount. As a result, this discount is an incentive to live alone rather than to use less water.

I understand the need to address water allocation in a drought. It makes sense to charge people more money for water when its scarce and reward those who are making sacrifices to ensure that the resevoirs do not go dry, which is exactly why any sort of water allocation or rationing program should take into account the type and expected occupancy of the residence in question.

As usual, any and all comments are welcome.