This is a message to all residential users of water in the Carpinteria Valley Water District. Your water board has enacted an ordinance concerning your use of water from their system. This ordinance, summarized and sent with your current water bill, contains specific constraints on your water use including new meter and volume surcharges. Also included are monetary fines for noncompliance along with deceptive means of enforcement. This is bound to antagonize the water customers.

Back in January 2014, I presented to the general manager and his analyst a scenario of rate changes, for varying consumption reductions from 10-50 percent, that could achieve the desired reduction strictly by applying higher rates only to those users above the median usage of the entire district and not affecting those users below the median. Thirty percent of the district’s customers use less than 6 hcf per month and should not be further penalized with surcharges. They are already conserving water.

My proposal would have accomplished the desired reduction in consumption without needing any ordinances, surcharges, and enforcement techniques that will only cause dissension from water customers.

This is a very unfortunate approach to controlling consumption and could have been avoided if my proposal had been heeded. The water board received copies of my proposal in April 2014 but chose to ignore it, as did management.

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