Another slant on desalination water
Have you heard the radio ad about the “Bubba Plumber,” who won’t give you a price estimate, before they begin the work?
Well, we have “Bubba Cities” locally, that have committed yours and my future water bills to the desalination project, without sharing what the estimated cost will be to our water bills.
Is the omission for publishing the cost to the ratepayers, a simple oversight, or do the officials actually not want us to know, before the “hammer comes down”?
I asked a public servant in an email recently, why no consumer prices are out there?
Answer: Because of the many variables, the price of water to the consumer has not been determined yet.
Poppycock!
Any engineer or bean counter can run some hypothetical numbers, using a slew of models, both real and virtual.
Something else: The PUC can’t override any of the actions taken by the cities or the San Diego County Water Authority, because those public water entities have publicly-elected boards (well sort of).
The public agencies, that have so magnanimously contracted for buying desalination water, have also committed our pocketbooks to very substantial and abrupt rate increases (in the near future), without having specific public hearings on the subject.
So, like a dumb bomb that has already been dropped, our water fate has been set. Next year, or the year after, get ready for the “Big Ouch.”
G. Lance Johannsen,
Carlsbad
