SLPPOA Homeowners,
Please reply to Board1@slppoa.org if you are interested in volunteering to work on a committee to discourage excessive water use by SLPPOA members based on the following information. We would like to present a proposed by-law amendment on this subject at the annual meeting for discussion.
The installation of water meters at households and on distribution lines in SLP has given our water volunteers the ability to track & trend water usage for each home. This has helped identify distribution system leaks that have been getting fixed, driving down the leakage rate for System 1. System 2 has maintained a very low leakage rate.
While lowering our leakage rate is good news economically and for regulatory compliance, we have also learned that a small number of households are abusing the fact that we do not charge for individual usage. Just a handful of households use an exorbitant amount of water - well beyond what is needed for cooking, cleaning, washing, and even watering a few plants. While most households use 2 to 6 thousand gallons a month, these users routinely use over 10,000 gallons per month. During the month of June, when SLPPOA water was needed to protect our community from the Cajete fire, one user dumped over 90,000 gallons on their property. That's enough to fill the Tender at the SLPPOA fire station over 45 times.
The Board considers this abuse extremely unfair to responsible SLPPOA homeowners.
After analyzing usage data, we have come up with a "strawman" policy to assess surcharges on homeowners that abuse their access to SLPPOA water. This strawman policy is aimed only at abusive owners - owners that repeatedly use over 10,000 gallons per month. Once identified as an abuser, the owner is assessed a per gallon charge for water used over what almost all other owners use. This assessment is intended to be punitive, rather than a source of funding for SLPPOA, to discourage abuse and get the abusers back in line with other owners.
Details:
Water usage is tracked over a year's time.
If an owner uses more than 10,000 three times in a year, they are subject to the surcharge. This keeps owners that develop leaks or other problems that are fixed in a timely manner to avoid the surcharge.
Once subject to the surcharge, usage over 60,000 gallons in a year is charged at $6 (How much should this be?) per 1,000 gallons. (Should charges escalate at some usage level?)
The surcharge is billed and paid with the owner's annual SLPPOA assessment. (Or would the committee recommend monthly billing?)
Based on analysis of water usage over the past year, this straw-man policy would result in 9 owners subject to the surcharge. The surcharges for these 9 owners would be $204, $294, $1,452, $216, $576, $936, $300, $1,218, and $0 (used less than 60,000 in a year).