Why No Questions About High Sewer Fee?

One day after reading Alice Muller’s letter Dec. 4 regarding Department of Water and Power bills, I received my DWP bill. I examined the charges on the bill and noted that there was a subtotal for water and a subtotal for electricity, yet there was no subtotal for non-DWP charges. A quick calculation yielded a surprising fact. Non-DWP charges were 31% of my total bill! Another calculation produced the fact that the non-DWP sewer charge was 77% of the water portion of my bill.

Why are the citizens of Los Angeles complaining about the high price of receiving and using DWP water, when they should be complaining about the cost of disposing of it in city sewers? Valley dwellers should be particularly upset with the sewer service portion of their bill, because most of their water probably goes back into the ground when used for landscaping. Why isn’t the City Council questioned about the exorbitant sewer charge? Because it is made to look like part of the DWP bill!

I think it is safe to say that a big chunk of my DWP bill goes to the city, not DWP, to pay for city sewers, garbage pickup and a 10% city utility tax. Additionally, the city annually receives 5% of DWP’s revenues ($100 million-plus) to use any way it likes. Now it wants to take more than the usual 5% for more police. Isn’t this a hidden tax? It might not come out of our pocketbooks directly, but after the next “big one” we had better be prepared to survive for three weeks, not three days, without water and power. The days of reliable, inexpensive water and power in the city of Los Angeles are destined to go the way of the city sewers if our civic leaders have their way.

DENNIS T. MILLER, Tujunga