After sticker shock, we’ll welcome meters (July 15)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
Some Maderans are likely to gasp when they see their water bills late this year or early next year after water meters start being read and used as the basis for billing. I, too, may be one of those who gasps, for although Mrs. Doud and I don’t have a water meter yet, we will be among those whose rates will go up anyway.
Some people think water ought to be free, or that they should somehow be exempt from the costs of bringing clean water to them.
We see this attitude throughout the county. On Tuesday, for example, some people showed up at the Madera County Board of Supervisors meeting to complain about having to pay the bills sent to them by their water districts.
People who don’t live in Madera or Chowchilla either have their own wells or belong to service districts which provide them with water and sewer service. For years, the county subsidized many of those districts’ costs from the county’s General Fund, but those days are past. Yet, some folks just don’t understand that they need to pay for what they use.
In the City of Madera, where no meters are read and most people pay for water according to the square footage of their lots, there has long been a feeling that some water users are wasteful, especially in the summer.
Most people who irrigate their yards tend to over-sprinkle — but would say they actually are responsible users of water. Meters will help sort that out.
The meters will be a good thing, after the sticker shock wears off. Wherever water meters are installed, people become better stewards of their water.
That’s something we need to be. We live in an area that’s just a step above a desert, and for decades we have been drawing down our water table. In dry years, as we’re presently experiencing, that becomes a serious situation, indeed. The next generation of Maderans will thanks us for those meters.
