Rathdrum Water Meters Tap A Nerve With Some Folks City To Charge More Than Average In Effort To Promote Conservation

(From For the Record, November 6, 1997:) Water figures in error: In Athol, the charge for 26,000 gallons of water per month is $25.60, or $3.40 less than in Rathdrum if Rathdrum charged metered rates. In Coeur d’Alene, the typical charge for 26,000 gallons of water per month is $22.22, or $6.78 less than in Rathdrum with a metered rate. The numbers were reported incorrectly in an article in Tuesday’s newspaper.

Residents will pay more for their water than public water customers in all other nearby towns once the city starts charging a rate based on usage.

City officials say the bills are necessary to encourage conservation and to pay for the city’s new water tank.

“There hasn’t been a town that hasn’t had to go through this,” said Public Works Director Robert Lloyd Jr.

“Meters are for conservation. If you don’t want to conserve, you have to pay extra. It is not a money-making kind of project and I feel we have to do it.”

At the City Council meeting Sept. 9, council members voted unanimously to place a moratorium on charging the metered rates until June 30, 1998. During the moratorium, city workers will install meters on as many of the approximately 263 homes without meters as possible.

“I think they should just wait (to bill metered rates) until everyone’s got meters,” said Susan Riddle, a Rathdrum resident.

At the council meeting, about 20 residents argued against the city’s decision to charge residents with meters a rate based on usage and residents without meters the same $21 flat rate they had been charged previously.

The problem is that many of the older houses in town - which are more likely to have wasteful leaks because their pipes are older - do not have meters. As new homes are built, builders are required to install them.

It costs the city $600 per house to install meters on existing homes - a price resident Gina Kiel complains city taxpayers should not have to pay.

“They’re not paying for their own meters like I had to do - we’re paying for their meters,” she said.

The money to install the new meters comes from the city’s capital improvement fund.

Once the metered rates are in place in Rathdrum, water bills will cost $21 per month for the first 10,000 gallons plus 50 cents for every 1,000 gallons over that.

For example, the four members of Kiel’s family used 26,000 gallons of water last month. A metered water bill in Rathdrum would have cost them $29.

In nearby towns, they would have spent less.

In Post Falls, where water bills are $5.75 per month plus 60 cents for every 1,000 gallons, the Kiels would have spent $21.36.

In fact, the Kiels would have spent between $3.40 less (in Coeur d’Alene) and $17 less (in Spirit Lake).

With meters, Lloyd said, the city will save between $7,000 and $10,000 each year in electricity bills alone because the city uses electricity to pump water from the wells.

Some residents say the city should give them more than the first 10,000 gallons at the flat rate.

“A single person living in a house alone would use 10,000 gallons,” Kiel said.

“For a family of four, I think 20,000 or 30,000 gallons is a better base for us,” Riddle said.

The average water usage across the nation is much less, at 8,750 gallons per household per month, according to the American Waterworks Association.

“We were getting over 25,000 gallons per residence this summer when they should be 10,000 or less,” Lloyd said.

“Without being metered, people tend to over-irrigate,” he said. “We’ve found people who turn on their sprinklers and go to work.”

In August, the city used about 3 million gallons of water when a typical use should have been about 1.5 million, he said. Leaky pipes cause part of the problem. City workers are fixing the leaks as they find them.

Residents need to fix their leaky plumbing, as well.

“You have a toilet that runs, that’s 2,000 to 3,000 gallons per month,” Lloyd said.

So far, the city has 1,380 meters on houses in Rathdrum. City workers are checking the meters, even though the city is not charging metered rates, to find any possible leaks and to determine an average amount of water use. The city prints the amount of water used on water consumers’ bills.

Once the public works department finishes working on some drainage projects around town, it will install about one meter per week, weather permitting.

“We’d like to speed it up. If we keep going at this rate, it could be three years” before finishing, he said.

Pairs of city workers work together to install each meter.

In June, the City Council will reexamine its policy on charging residents for their water usage.

Lloyd said he hopes it will start charging metered rates again.

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