Plan Would Hit Big Water Users Harder : Utilities: Thousand Oaks council will take up a proposal to create a tiered rate system for residential customers.

Weighing a plan to give citizens more control over their water bills, the Thousand Oaks City Council on Tuesday will debate whether to charge guzzlers more per gallon.

Under the proposed billing system, homeowners would pay more for each gallon they use above a specified level. Residential customers now pay a flat rate of $1.54 for each unit of water. One unit equals 748 gallons.

If approved during Tuesday’s public hearing, the tiered rate structure would take effect Feb. 1. The price of the first 26 units of water would fall to $1.39 each, while each unit above that would jump to $1.79.

In Thousand Oaks, the average household uses 36 units every two months.

The new system would generate the same amount of money for the city as the current flat-rate policy, Utilities Director Donald Nelson said. But the financial burden would shift to heavy water users, including residents with large, landscaped back yards.

Residents using an average amount of water would actually see their bimonthly bills drop by $1.40. By contrast, homeowners who go through twice the average would have to ante up an extra $7.10 every two months.

“Fair’s fair,” resident Bruce Parton said. “I have a large lot, but I would learn to adjust my water use if the bill was too high. I think that (tiered) system would be very fair.”

The new billing system would affect only individually metered households, and not commercial, industrial or irrigation accounts.

While Nelson was reluctant to label the proposal a water conservation measure, some city leaders and residents said the new rates should prompt people to fix leaky taps and plant drought-resistant landscaping.

In most cases, the change would amount to only a few dollars a month. Still, Thousand Oaks resident Jack Young said he would be motivated to conserve.

“That’s what it’s all about--saving a few dollars here and there and keeping the bills from getting too high,” Young said. “Anything that encourages conservation would certainly benefit all of us.”

In preliminary discussions of the tiered system, Mayor Elois Zeanah worried aloud that the rate change would unfairly penalize homeowners with large yards. If their bills skyrocketed, she theorized, they might stop watering their lawns as frequently, and some lush slopes might wither.

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To address that concern, city staff has drafted an alternative proposal for more conservative rate tiers so that large users are not penalized as much. This second plan would drop the rate for the first 26 units to $1.46 and raise the price of each additional unit to $1.67.

Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski said last week that she might favor this less-dramatic change during a test period “to see if people will truly benefit” from a tiered rate system.

“People with new landscaping can use designs geared toward minimal water use,” Zukowski said. “But for older properties, it would take some time (to change landscaping). In the long term, a tiered rate would only be beneficial. But in the interim, people may have to adjust.”