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You have to calculate
to find water use
Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker proposed
this week that everyone cut their water consumption to 25 gallons per day per
person. The proposal was not adopted by the Raleigh City Council, but it is
still being considered.
Governor Mike Easley is also urging
individual person conservation given the exceptional drought that covers a
large portion of the state, including the Triangle.
However, it is difficult for Wake
Forest residents to tell what their water usage is from the water and sewer
bills issued by the City of Raleigh because the bills list only “units.”
One unit is 748 gallons.
The 748 gallons are equivalent to
1,000 cubic feet, which is how Raleigh measures water.
When you get your bill – which has
been revised several times recently – you will see a figure for your current
and previous usage and the difference is your consumption in units for the
service period, but it is not your true usage, just the number of usage units.
To get the number of gallons you
really used, divide your charge for water (Water Inside Monthly) by the Wake
Forest water rate of $3.24 per 1,000 gallons. We are still using the town water
rates because they were frozen in place when merger took place July 1, 2005.
If your water charge was $4.84 divide
that by $3.24 and the result is 1.49. Multiply 748 by 1.49 and you will have
the number of gallons your household used in a month, 1,117.
In this exercise, you can also divide
1,117 by two, if you are a couple, divide again by the number of service days,
in this case 25 days, and you find you have each used 22 gallons.
That is what the mayor meant by
conservation.
Just
so you know, the charges for water in Wake Forest are $3.24 per 1,000 gallons
plus a $4.60 base or administration fee.
For sewer, the usage charge is $4.86
per 1,000 gallons plus a $9.26 base charge.
When the town has completely paid the
cost of merger, somewhere around $21 million, the town residents will be
converted to the Raleigh water and sewer rates. That will take place some time
around 2012 or 2013.
It was not clear this week how Mayor
Meeker’s proposed 50 percent surcharge on water bills would be calculated for
the towns outside Raleigh.
Raleigh owns the water and sewer
systems in Wake Forest, Rolesville, Garner, Knightdale, Wendell and Zebulon.
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