IGIN Irrigation Connection 101: North Carolina

Customers complain all the time about their water bills and take it for granted how inexpensive our water bills are. The next time you think your bill is too high think about this; In North Carolina a new State regulation would require irrigation systems tied to municipal water or public water supplies to have their own meters. Those charges are about $3,800. The meters are to have an additional upfront cost to help protect the state's water supply, basically a flat fee to have the right to irrigate your lawn. Officials in Charlotte, North Carolina are also considering imposing a surcharge on irrigation consumers that use high volumes of water during a drought. City Council members increased water rates by 15% last year, after mandatory watering restrictions negatively affected the revenue of the utility department. Do you think they will lower rates in the future if they receive more revenue then they project? Yeah right...

So your $3000-$6000 irrigation system would end up being $6800-$9800, my crystal ball tells me that would leave a few people unemployed as well as be a little unfair to those that are grandfathered in. You would think that instead they would just consider placing some kind of tax or fee of $50 or so per a house. Since they may have what 30,000 - 50,000 + existing systems. (40,000 x 50 = $2,000,000) which would equal 526 new systems.

I think I may add to this post time to time since it really bugs me;

$3,800 to help protect the States water supply? Unless they mean to protect against theft or terrorism they probably mean to help preserve the States water supply. I don't get paid the big bucks to sit around and discuss these matters but if I were to I would just throw them a curve ball..

GET THIS.... Lets think out of the box for a minute.. Instead of just being lazy and throwing a large monetary number for a new irrigation system.. why don't you.... set standards for efficiency for new systems and existing systems. This is not rocket science, the average system can achieve an increase of 30-50% in efficiency when audited properly and in combination to affordable ET technology. Maybe they would not like that idea since it would have a negative effect on their revenue :( and they also would not be able to charge the $3,800 fee for those that wanted to protect their investments.