Letter to Editor | Awash in water bills

||| FROM MICHAEL RIORDAN |||

Is anyone else aghast at their January water bills?

Ours came in at just over $100, despite using a piddling (puddling?) 2927 gallons — less than 100 gallons per day for just two people, or 3.4 cents per gallon. That included a whopping base rate of $71.74, despite using over 5000 gallons in only one month during 2025, in September, when we probably were watering our garden a wee bit too much.

Imagine what struggling families of four or five are having to pay.

I can remember the halcyon days of a decade ago, when Paul Kamin was EWUA General Manager and kept a tight lid on costs — including on his own salary, which never topped $100,000 except in 2020, his last year on the job. You’d pay $45 a month unless you used over 5,000 gallons, in which case you paid a penalty for every extra
1,000 gallons. That encouraged conservation! In 2018, for example, we used only 25,655 gallons and paid a total of $564, or 2.2 cents a gallon. This year, water will cost us well over twice that much.

Those were the good old days, I guess.