Posted on 01/27/2016 11:10:30 AM PST by nickcarraway
California's only large water district that publicly shames water wasters is admitting it messed up in some cases, mistakenly reporting jacked-up numbers for some of its customers.
The Contra Costa Times was the first to report Wednesday that East Bay Municipal Utility District officials said they are re-examining the lists that contained more than 4,200 names of customers that the agency said violated its limit and were also made public.
EBMUD acknowledged the mistake after the newspaper found the goof, and officials said it might take two weeks or more to determine exactly how many customers might not in fact be taking lengthy showers or overwatering their green lawns.
"It's East Bay MUD that should be ashamed," Director John Coleman told the Contra Costa Times. "If you're going to fine customers and shame them publicly, you should be as accurate as possible. The current system isn't fair."
One of the highest profile water wasters EBMUD announced last fall was Oakland A's executive Billy Beane. It’s unclear whether the subject of the "Moneyball" book and film indeed used just short of 6,000 gallons of water per day, as EBMUD reported in October 2015. The newspaper account did not mention him by name, and EBMUD has not yet released a full list of the mistaken water users. But the Contra Costa Times did uncover that at least two of the top five users who made EBMUD's latest list earlier this month were said to be using far more than they actually used in the last billing period. One was a retired Orinda woman who was listed as using 5,437 gallons a day only used about 1,009 gallons per day -- just above the district's limit of approximately 1,000 gallons-per-day household, district officials said. The second, the newspaper learned, is an Alamo plastic surgeon who was listed as using 5,248 gallons per day when he actually used 3,453 per day – still more than 2,000 gallons more than he should, according to the district.
The newspaper uncovered the discrepancies after noticing that neither one had made previous guzzler lists, and wondered how could someone use more water in the fall and not the summer? In both cases, the district told the newspaper that crews couldn’t accurately read the customers' meters because something like a root, branch or a structure obscured the meter.
A few years ago, I had a water nazi tell me they may peak over my fence to look at my water use.
My wife and I use about 200 gallons average a day. How does one use 3000+ gallons a day during what they consider a water shortage??
BTW, I think the average US usage is about 85 gallons per day per person.
That's a scary statement in and of itself. Even if it got its facts right, a government authority should not be in the business of "shaming" utility customers. It smacks of Stalin's and Mao's show trials.
In San Diego in the ‘80s a buddy and I were jogging - a grandmother type was watering her lawn with a water hose during the drought, buddy said - ‘Hey, you know we are in a drought” - she said, “Go to hell - I’m 83 and can do what ever I want”
The water Nazi would see my Rottweiler peeking back at him.
FWIW, I live in this district and I can tell you that Director Coleman is no prince either. We have had contact over EBMUD’s “level of preparedness” for the draught. EBMUD started “mixing in” Sacramento River water with their pure Sierra source, late last year. The water coming from the tap smelled so bad that I made contact with one of their “water quality engineers.” This guy said two things 1. “people up in Sacramento county do not suffer ill-effects from their use of the river water as a primary source” (he actually used different wording but I won’t quote it) and 2. he advised me “to drink bottled water or buy a good filtration system.” The sorry fact of the matter is that EBMUD, and indeed the whole state water system is a joke. We haven’t built a new major water storage facility since 1979, and in the interim, our population has gone from 20 to 40 milion. These people who are elected to govern agencies like EBMUD see their “jobs” as not to provide enough good quality water but to tell us all we will just have to conserve more because “it’s for the environment, don’t you know!” We event have some morons who want to take out major water storage facliities built more than 100 years ago because they are “hard on our fish populations.”
“My wife and I use about 200 gallons average a day.”
Well, I guess you live in a zero lot line home without landscaping. Some of our neighbors are in the article. They have large properties that are well landscaped. And as long as there’s no shortage of water, EBMUD is only too happy to sell them all that they want. We cut our water usage 56%, didn’t exceed the arbitrary limit ( which EBMUD set lower that Jerry the Fairy’s edict demanded, and we still got a sharply worded letter saying that we needed to do even better. We even bought a 300 gallon storage contaner and “trucked in” landscaping water from the sewage treatment plant which is a 30 mile round trip. The only good news is that we’re on our way back to normal with reservoirs approacing 50% of capacity and with tons of snow in the Sierras.
As a former Public Works Director, part of my job was to explain to angry residents why their bill was so high, but it was never to shame them.
In almost all cases it was because they had some sort of water leak or they admitted they had several people visit during that month or they were over watering their yards.
It really is a pretty simple process to check water usage since they all have a meter in their front yard.
East Bay mud is an apt moniker.
It depends on how many people live in your home and how much/what type landscaping you have.
We need to step up our usage, it appears.
Really? Thanks for that info. I said AVERAGE.
Actually we live on an acre and it is well landscaped. We also don’t live in a desert.
Well the water meter doesn’t measure it per person...
Don’t ask dumb questions if you don’t like the obvious answer...
Typical garden hose flow is about 2.5 gallons per minute. If you let it run all day (2.5 GMP x 60 min/hr x 24 hours /day) you'd have 3,600 gallons of usage. Many people can do a lot better than 2.5 GPM.
If you don’t follow up with dumb remarks I won’t ask dumb questions.
The water studies I read, yes I spent time as a hydrologist, consistently show usage to be 80-85 potable gallons per person. In fact, in planning most utilities use a factor above that plus allowances for season of the year and expected growth rates when designing their systems. In areas of the US, like the desert west, when landscaping comes into play, the usage can be much higher.
Regardless, 3000+ gallons for a residential property is insane where the desert area has a drought. I was up in Hetch Hetchy this summer, it was parched, fires burning, and a concern. Right now there is a declining El Nino and the near outlook is many rain events, hopefully the snow pack will equal what it should be by spring but the long term prognosis for California is continued drought in case you want to know.
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