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Okay, we’re in a drought. I’m curious though when it became fair game for a utility district, in this case East Bay MUD, to release the biggest water users in their district? Are water bills part of the public domain?
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I live in the area, and pay EBMUD a ridiculous amount for water. Decided to let t he plants die this year rather than water them as it is cheaper to relandscape than water. That said, I don’t recall anything from EBMUD stating that my usage as a customer was fair game to release to the masses.
If that is indeed part of the public domain, I’d love to see an expose on the power and water usage of those in Congress pushing “green” initiatives.
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I don’t like public shaming tactics. But the math in the calculations is interesting.
The average user in MUD is 205 gal/day. That’s the mean and gives cover to a lot of users up to 1646/day. The fine threshold is $2/748 gallons of use above 1646 gal/day x60 (I assume). That number is variable. 748 + 1646 = 2394 = $2 fine threshold x 60 days = $120 for the lowest threshold (748/day x 60) above.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but 1646 gallons/day over 2 billing cycles makes you an abuser subject to shame but not fine. So you can use up to 2393 gals/day and not be fined but you can be shamed. 2394 x 60 and above makes you a water leper.
Reminds me of the IRS code. They would be smarter to simply bracket usage costs and forget the shaming. And for low users give them water rebates. Kind of an Earned Income Credit for water use.
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Several years ago, we were in another drought. EBMUD encouraged folks to cut back voluntarily. So we did, lost plants, etc. but cut our usage significantly. The next year, the drought worsened and they mandated cuts imposing penalties for anyone who used 90% or more of their usage from the prior year. I may be off on my percentage, but because we had cut back the prior year, we had an artificially low baseline and were screwed because we did what they asked the prior year and cut back. . . .
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