S. Tahoe among few communities without water meters
By Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News
Despite urgent calls for water conservation amid one of California’s worst droughts, more than 255,000 homeowners and businesses across the state can still use all the water they want without paying higher bills.
And nobody even knows how much water they are using.
From Bakersfield to Sacramento to Shasta County to Lake Tahoe, 42 communities in California have not installed the most basic tool of water management — water meters — for all of their connections.
People without meters are charged a flat monthly rate in those areas for water, usually between $20 and $35 a month. And those communities use 39 percent more water per capita than the state average, according to an analysis of state Department of Water Resources records by the San Jose Mercury News.
Most California residents have had water meters for generations.
Communities have different explanations for why they’ve been slow to install meters. In South Lake Tahoe, officials had to upgrade sewer systems that were in danger of polluting the lake, and they still need to modernize water systems for fire protection, said Richard Solbrig, general manager of the South Tahoe Public Utility District.
“Basically our community had other priorities that were a lot more important,” he said. “A lot of people get upset when we say Lake Tahoe is different than other places. But the reality is that it is.”
South Lake Tahoe has no water meters? I have one at my house!
Acknowledge that 70% of Tahoe homes are owned by someone who doesn’t live here full time. From this, one would have to conclude that far less water is used by homes (in the aggregate) in Lake Tahoe. Adding water meters is an additional expense that will unnessarily increase cost. We already use less than most communities. We usually don’t water any landscaping for at least four months of the year (this year possibly excluded). STUPD should be challenging the requirement in court in the best interests of their customers. Any money used to add meters should be used to increase capacity for firefighting, IMHO.
I don’t quite understand how anyone can do a study of water use per home if there are no water meters. Maybe the average is thrown off by snowmaking. Make sure there is a water meter at the snowmaking building at Cal Lodge before you put one on my house.
Then there is the issue of how meters are to be “read”…
Maybe we don’t need them in south Tahoe because we have a tremendous surplus of water every year and the cost to deliver it is minimal in relationship to total cost of maintaining and building system.
The entire Lake Tahoe basin and Truckee River drainage has an excess of water year in, year out. What really makes things different here are the 2nd homeowners and the fact that very little water is used for agribusiness in this area. There is no reason whatsoever to have water meters in Tahoe.
Oh yeah . I live in one of the targeted areas that have active metered water use, which happens to be in the county. I have had an eye opening bill that was three times what it was before our meter was hooked up! I actually have no problem paying for what we use but feel charging some of the residents and not others for actual water usage is very unfair. While our back yard and landscaping is really what we look forward to more than anything now we must cut back and manage it more efficiently. Once again this meter system should be completed before charging anyone more than those who do not have a meter yet! Common sense to me but that means little to STPUD.
If we get water meters, will we be charged a flat rate or per gallon? Agri-business uses 70-80% of the water in California now. Do they want more?
STPUD must install meters.
Read Calif Water Code section 527. Once the meter has been installed they must charge, each customer with a meter, based on the actual volume of water as measured by the meter.
As an “Urban Water Supplier” they may recover the cost for the purchase, installation and operation of a water meter from rates, fees or charges.
Get used to being metered.