||| 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.
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Our latest bill was $107.33 using an average of 39 gallons a day (according to Eye on Water). So, roughly 1,200 gallons at roughly 11.2 cents a gallon. Still less than gasoline cost when I was a kid… normally our bill has been around 20% below the new rate. If this goes on, the only way to afford the bills is to manage of our local “nonprofit” utilities… :-)
We headed out to Doe Bay for brunch last Sunday, only to find the restaurant had closed due to some “water problem.” I hope they’ve managed to get that fixed.
We rented a home off Harper Lane years back and the water every month was over 100 bucks. Now we live in Rosario using the same amount of water and it’s 45 bucks a month. It seems there is a difference as to where you live on the island.
Dear Orcasonian readers. I did not make the comment above attributed to my name, and despite repeated requests, Lin has yet to take it down. It is a worthwhile observation that should be taken into account in evaluating the more than doubling of water rates that has occurred since 2018, but it does not represent my opinion.