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From Thursday's post: Whatever happened with the records that the city was keeping from you? After you got them, were you able to point out the error of their ways?
. . . Have you stopped that unnecessary water storage, the one you have proven is not needed and duplicates what we have?

Unfortunately I am trying to do two things, always a bad idea for me. While I am convinced that the possible savings justifies taking a look at avoiding unnecessary costs, I still had a couple questions: possible additional savings on an alternate plan for storage, and the impact on the water fund. These required different information than I asked for before. As the city controls the information, I find myself again struggling to get information through a pubic records request.

Anything you can do to get our water bills lowered would be wonderfull. Mine have tripled!

As I child I remember once having to do my homework by candlelight. I was told not to talk about it to my friends, their power had not gone out. I remember also the trips to pay the water and electric bills. Sending a check in the mail was not possible, my mom was paying cash and did not have enough to pay them all. So to each office she went to tell them she intended to pay and negotiate a payment for that month.

I wish I could say the City could lower the bills. But realistically, I fear the best we can do is work to control further increases.

Water/sewer rates have gone up, but triple? Wow, ours have not tripled, but there is one less of us at home and we cut back on watering. Of course, perhaps your usage may have changed with the addition to your household of a baby. Or, in this economic times, people have opened their homes to unemployed family or to provide care for elderly family.

I am not familiar enough with the rate increases to know if a bill would have tripled if usage remained the same. For a while, I think we all assumed that any increase was due to the rates going up. But please go to City Hall and ask them to check your usage. You may have a leak which may be effecting your bill. It is amazing how those drops add up, it may be outside and you are not aware of it. Despite my public records concerns I have found that most of city staff are helpful and often very friendly.

And this comment from an email: But, what with water shortages and fights over water plainly occurring in CA, with more - and worse - to come, it is hard to be opposed to an extra storage capacity.

I have also heard that water supply is a concern for many communities. From what I've read, I think that at some point in the not too distant future we may also have a supply issue. We will reach the limit of Fortuna's supply, the ability to pump water to storage, because of limits to our water rights.

The immediate question for us is water storage for Fortuna's largest pressure zone. Here the issue is whether we spend money on building extra storage in the north while there is a shortage of storage in the south. There may also be other deferred projects needing attention. This new tank is at least a $4,000,000 project which could be possibly be done for $600,000 if we use the existing city reservoir on Vancil Street. There are extra operating costs, but it could take 50 years to spend as much as we will spend on building costs and interest for this new tank.

Another concern which has been expressed to me is emergency storage. I agree we have to plan for emergencies. The required 4.5 million gallons of storage provides for maximum day usage and fire flow. If we decide we need 8.25 million gallons of storage, is it wise to put 7 million gallons of if on one ridge line in the far north? Is putting 7 of our 8 eggs in one basket a good idea? And those northern hills, did you know that Fortuna was called Slide at one point in our history? If the decision is made to build a new 2 million gallon tank to preserve the 4 million gallons as additional emergency storage will the City Council back up that action with policy to so preserve it?

It is important to remember that without the new tank we would still have 6.25, possibly as much as 6.75, million gallons of storage.

There is more on this at Fortunacitizen, hopefully I'll get back to update it soon.