Letters Show Users’ Anger With District

Some of the letters have been tucked into water bills. Others are written by hand and in anger. One woman was so infuriated she wrote twice.

Questionable spending practices at the Santa Margarita Water District, where some ratepayers are charged among the highest water bills in the county, have prompted a flurry of letters, telephone calls and threats of non-payment that have so rattled the district that a public relations firm was hired this week to deal with the furor.

In the week after the first articles were published by The Times about the spending and gift-taking practices of General Manager Walter W. (Bill) Knitz and Assistant General Manager Michael P. Lord, reaction has been swift.

The district has received about 30 vitriolic letters and 40 to 50 telephone complaints and has drawn a string of protesters picketing outside its administration headquarters in Mission Viejo, district workers said. Early last week, several people were seen with placards at one heavily traveled intersection. “Honk if you are tired of Santa Margarita Water District perks,” they read.

At a special board meeting last week, district Chairman Don B. Schone said he feared for the health and safety of the district’s employees and openly wondered about the “potential for unruliness” at future meetings.

A sampling of letters shows the disdain of ratepayers toward the district.

With a check accompanying his March water bill, a Newport Beach attorney asked that the Santa Margarita Water District “provide me with the plans (it has) to reimburse its customers for the unjustified and excessive expenditures by the district on behalf of their top executives. . . .”

“We now know why the Santa Margarita Water District charges its customers more than any other district in Orange County,” the lawyer added.

Water users in the district pay a rate depending on which “improvement district” they are in. In the Mission Viejo area, for example, the average bill runs about $19.13 for those who use 9,000 gallons a month. But in the more remote Coto de Caza area, with the highest rates in Orange County, the same 9,000 gallons cost $33.39. The Rancho Santa Margarita and Rancho Mission Viejo areas pay about $22.25 a month for the same amount of water.

The differences are based on the difficulty of pumping water in certain areas, district officials say. The district serves a population of 84,421, even though there are only about 26,000 water connections.

One Rancho Santa Margarita resident wrote that he was “disgusted” when he sat down to make out a check for his payment to the Santa Margarita Water District this month.

“As a utility granted a public monopoly, you have special duties and obligations to the public, which have been grossly breached,” he wrote. “If the district has the funds to tolerate the type of waste and corruption recently publicized, it has the funds to reduce our and many other customers’ bills.”

Pointing out that he was paying in protest, the customer said he hoped that the district would take “swift and appropriate action to repair the damage done to its customers and its image.”

Enter David Ellis and Scott Hart, political consultants hired by the board of directors Monday night to improve the district’s image.

“All of this has kind of thrown the water district’s operation into disarray,” Hart said Tuesday. “These people are in the business of providing water and they’re pretty much in shock right now.”

Ellis and Hart are also being asked to handle all public complaints, such as the letter from Robert J. Lewis and his wife Elaine of Rancho Santa Margarita, who wrote to express their “extreme disgust at the immoral, unethical, appalling . . . behavior exhibited by officers of the water district. . . .”

The Lewises asked why rates are not being reduced if so much money is available, why there are no controls in place and what remedial action is underway.

“No reply is anticipated to this letter,” they wrote. “We assume you will treat it with the same disdain that your unscrupulous executives treat their paying customers.”

Some water customers have threatened to withhold their latest payments, but a district employee who spoke only on the condition that he not be named said there are no known cases of non-payment thus far. Bills are due the first of each month, however, and many payments are still coming in.

Water rates have been raised in each of the last two years, most recently last July. According to an Orange County water rate survey published in December, rates in the district are expected to rise again in July because of wholesale water rate increases from the Metropolitan Water District and a state diversion of property taxes.

One customer who lives in Mission Viejo was so upset that she wrote the district twice, once on March 30 and again Saturday, after receiving the district’s 1992 Water Quality Report newsletter.

“I am incensed by the excesses and high living your employees enjoy at our expense,” the woman wrote to the Board of Directors. “The fact that the chairman has such a cavalier attitude toward their avarice makes me wonder what unpardonable sins he himself has committed.”

After the Water Quality Report turned up in the mail, the woman wrote again.

“Until you put your money where your mouth is, you can save your beleaguered subscribers further dollars by not wasting postage and printing this type of propaganda.”

Outraged Water Customers

In recent days, the Santa Margarita Water District has received letters from ratepayers reacting to news that two top administrators took thousands of dollars in gifts from firms doing business with the district.