Letters: Dual water meters could be costly

Re “Spoiled about water,” Opinion, Feb. 24

Installing dual water meters to measure both indoor and outdoor use as a way to help save water sounds like a good idea until factoring in the total costs.

The $255 “sub meter” cited by the authors is only a fraction of what’s needed to set up a dual water meter system. One must factor in the trenching and then installation of a second pipe from each meter to the residences, and then the plumbing on through the residence to the backyard, where there may be more landscaping or a pool.

Repairing and replacing planters and concrete driveways after laying pipes adds more to the total cost. The entire concept becomes a plumber’s financial windfall or someone’s worst nightmare, depending on your point of view.

Robert Soukup

Long Beach

The suggestion of a new price structure for water use ignores one important fact: Some people live in condos with postage-stamp yards, and some people (like myself) live on semi-rural , half-acre or one-acre lots with fruit orchards and mature trees on them.

We cannot allow these beautiful large lots, mostly in older neighborhoods, to become blighted due to a tiered-price water system that penalizes us large-lot owners as “water wasters” because we use more water than owners of condos.

In Thousand Oaks, where I live, this is exactly what is happening. Because lot size is not taken into account within the tiered-price system, I am paying upward of $500 a month in the summer to keep my mature trees alive. Many of my neighbors, similarly penalized by the city, have simply stopped watering.

I fear we may be facing a “silent spring” if this pricing system isn’t changed to reflect the homeowner’s lot size.

Linda Ames

Thousand Oaks

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