Have You Opened Your Napa Water Bill Lately?
A Napa Valley Register column by city editor Kevin Courtney put a real number on rising water costs. His household opened a two-month bill for $470, even after using 20,000 fewer gallons than the year before. The savings barely showed up because the city raised rates and moved heavy users into higher pricing tiers.
Courtney expected that trend to keep going, writing that "water is an increasing threatened resource" that will likely get more expensive to push conservation.
For apartment and condo owners, this is the same story at a larger scale. When a city raises rates and reworks its brackets, a property on one master meter absorbs every increase across every unit, and residents have little reason to cut back because they never see what they use.
Submetering ties each unit's bill to its own usage. Residents get a reason to fix leaks and conserve, and owners are not left covering the full cost of the next rate hike.
Learn about the benefits of submetering your real estate with NES.