Conserve water and you may pay $15 or more per 1000 gallons while your neighbor may pay less than $6 to use excessive amounts water.  

July 1^styour water bill may increase dramatically. Our City Council approved the Water Rate Study Proposal and you will be receiving the notice in the mail. You have 45 days to respond to this travesty but it takes half of the city’s residents to convince the city to provide a more equitable cost structure.

The price increase is the easy way out.  It penalizes water conservation and encourages water use by more than doubling meter rates and decreasing the cost of water by a third.

This increase is necessary. First to assure funding of our water department during low water demand periods such as the last few months of rainy weather or during drought conditions.  Second to fund replacement of infrastructure.  This capital improvement program is urgent because prior city councils neglected to act to replace aging pipes and improve access to water by drilling deeper.  

It gets worse: five years from now residents who conserve water will be paying as much as three times that of their neighbor.   The water costs calculations are based upon water usage provided by one of our council members during the April 2^ndcouncil meeting.  

Water conservation is an urgent concern in California.  The city should provide proactive water pricing to encourage water conservation.   In the December issue of the Observer a member of the Ad Hoc Committee wrote, “…wells and pump upgrades to maximize the amount of less expensive groundwater that Fullerton can pump.”     This conflicts with Best Management Practices “…think of our hydrological bank account – and do more to sustain a healthy level of water assets, regardless of how much rain the… year brings.” Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2019.

It may be too late to stop the increases but the city should consider infrastructure replacement with alternate ways to fund capital improvement projects.  Our rusty, busty pipes need immediate replacement, not the approved “pay as you go” method that is never ending, promising a continuation of the current pipeline breaks every three or four days.