Despite urgent calls for water conservation amid one of California’s worst droughts, more than 255,000 homeowners and businesses across the state can still use all the water they want without paying higher bills.
And nobody even knows how much water they are using.
From Bakersfield to Sacramento to Shasta County, 42 communities in California have not installed the most basic tool of water management — water meters — for all of their connections. People without meters are charged a flat monthly rate in those areas for water, usually between $20 and $35 a month. And those communities use 39 percent more water per capita than the state average, according to an analysis of state Department of Water Resources records.
“Everybody I talk to about this is shocked,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit group in Oakland, Calif., that studies water issues. “I get calls from Europe saying, ‘What? You still don’t meter everybody in California?’ A rational water system would measure and monitor everyone’s water use so it can be properly managed.”
Most California residents have had water meters for generations.
Los Angeles finished installing them in the 1920s. San Jose has had meters on every home since the 1930s. Oakland began installing them in 1906 and was fully metered by 1940.
Communities that have been holdouts are now slowly installing meters after years of resisting for reasons that ranged from political ideology to financial hardship.
But they have another 10 years to finish the job: Under a law signed a decade ago by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, all urban water providers are required to install meters on all connections by 2025.
“We know from experience that people with metered connections are more careful with their water use and use less water than people without meters,” said Gleick, who thinks lawmakers should move the deadline to 2020. “It’s long past time that 100 percent of California users were metered.”
Most of the communities that haven’t installed meters for all water customers are in the Central Valley. Sacramento still has 66,245 connections without meters — 49 percent of its connections.
Some areas are much further behind. Small towns with struggling economies, including Galt, Shafter, Rio Vista and the city of Mount Shasta, all have 80 percent or more of their connections without meters.
Most Sacramento residents, he added, have come to terms with meters.
“Once meters became a reality and we phased it in, I think people are fine with it,” Darrell Steinberg, a former Sacramento city councilman, said. “If we’re serious about conservation, then we have to create an incentive to help people use less water.”
