Information on water rates
We all knew it was coming. We just were never told, how much it would cost us.
“They” either couldn’t — or wouldn’t tell us. Now, buried in our utility bills among the trash service and sewer charges, are the new water rates — water rates that are the result of going online with our “new and shiny water” from the desalination facility. I checked my bill.
Maybe you should check your own. A typical bill from mid-year 2015, had a combined rate for “usage” and “delivery,” of about $7 per unit of water, because I usually maintain a usage within Tier 1.
Fast forward to 2016, and the billing rate has risen by over $2 a unit.
That works out for me (in Tier 1) to about a 30 percent billing rate hike.
I predicted that there would be a substantial hike in consumer water bills, but I didn’t realize the favorite tactic of “hiding a rate hike within the other charges,” until I dug into my own water billing.
My fellow citizens, it didn’t have to happen this way.
Surfrider and San Diego Coastkeeper were both on record for not supporting a mega desal-facility, until we were using all the conservation and resources available. I had said in prior letters, that the project seemed like a “drummed-up deal” to make venture capitalist investors happy and make our local boards think they had solved the water crisis in a way that would hurt the least.
Yes, our Carlsbad citizenry is generally well-off financially, but there are plenty of neighborhoods out there, living at the lower end of the economic scale, and who will be hard-pressed to pay 30 percent more for their water — especially if other services are soon jacked up, with the CPI (index).
G. Lance Johannsen, Carlsbad
