 |
There are those mythical "Dirty 30," water use abusers, people who have been cited by the Mayor and other city officials for much of the town's woes (link). But as of this date none have been identified. Nor has the proposed meeting between the city and its worst water use offenders ever taken place.
Courtesy of an article published in today's edition of the Pasadena Star News ("Californians cut water use by 20.3 percent in November, still within overall target goal" - link), here is the list of area cities failing to achieve their Sacramento mandated water use goals for this past November:
You have perhaps noticed that Sierra Madre's shortfall of 12% is the second largest percentage in that bunch. It is believed by some in town that the cause for this anomalous number is due to the large amounts of water being lost to leakage from all of those old pipes and infrastructure the Sierra Madre Water Department operates. But so far nobody has been able to get any figures from the city to back that up.
Here is how Bruce Inman describes the reasons for such water use accountancy problems in a December 27 Star News article titled "How Sierra Madre’s water issues went from bad to worse due to the drought" (link):
So there you have it. Sierra Madre is repeatedly among those cities that cannot meet its state mandated water use goals, yet the head of the city's Water Department cannot "quantify" a quite possible reason for this due to a billing procedure.
The state fine for cities failing to hit their goal is $61,000. So yes, of course we are.
The Dirty 30 meeting that never took place
For the record, this article ("Sierra Madre to call in top 30 water users; other cities concerned about meeting targets" - link) ran in our local dailies last October 30th. Here is part of what it said:
Like I said above, it is now more than two months later and that meeting has never taken place. Maybe it is because the city cannot tell for certain if these "top 30 water users" are actually responsible for the problem?
Or, perhaps, there are no longer 30 offenders?
We'll see if we can't get you some answers.
sierramadretattler.blogpsot.com