If you are a customer of the Borrego Water District, you received with your monthly statement for May a copy of the District’s “Water Service Agreement” and a request to complete and return it. The terms and conditions of service from the “Borrego Water District Administrative Code,” are listed as bullet points on the form. There are a couple of curious inconsistencies in the list that you may or may not have noticed.
The ninth bullet point states that "Customer is responsible for all plumbing on their side of the water meter." The 13th bullet point, however, grants the District’s “duly authorized agents” a nearly unqualified right to “to enter or leave the customer’s premises for any purpose reasonably related to the service of water to the customer.” The question is then, if the “Customer is responsible for all plumbing on their side of the water meter,” what would be a “purpose reasonably related to the service of water to the customer” that would give the District’s “duly authorized agents” cause to enter the customer’s property under the authority granted to them in 13th bullet point? If, as seems likely, there is none, then what is its purpose? If, as also seems likely, it has none, then it should be deleted.
In a like manner, the 7th bullet point makes the customer responsible for keeping the "meter box free of landscaping, bees and debris." It is not unreasonable to expect that a property owner not impede the District’s access to the meter box; but if there is a bee infestation of the meter box itself, then the implications of the 9th and 10th bullet points, the cumulative effect of which is to make everything up to and including the shut-off valve on the customer side of a meter the District’s responsibility, clearly make that the District's problem since the meter and virtually all of the meter box is on BWD's "side of the meter."
Makes you wonder if anybody at BWD ever reads this stuff, doesn’t it?
In themselves these are small matters, of course; but they are also indicative of the arbitrary,
capricious, and careless manner in which the Borrego Water District far
too often conducts business. You might want to contact the
District to see how they try to explain away the above inconsistencies.
If you have not yet returned the agreement, consider striking or
modifying the problematic terms and conditions before doing so. If
you have already returned it, call BWD and ask for another copy of the agreement and modify it.
06.20.09