MORONGO
BASIN — Two major utility companies are helping some of their
financially strapped customers avoid the pinch of the Grinch this
holiday season.
Southern California Edison suspended service
disconnections from Dec. 15 to Jan. 21, and the Southern California Gas
Company gave a cut-off reprieve from Dec. 21 to Jan. 3.
But
homeowners, landlords and tenants could still be in trouble unpaid
water bills have caused a dwelling’s water meter to be locked off.
Said
Randy Rogers, the county’s deputy director for code enforcement, the
state’s Health and Safety Code authorizes his department to declare a
dwelling substandard if it is without a potable water system.
While
code enforcement doesn’t go looking for violators, Rogers says his
department does respond to complaints or concerns that conditions at a
property may be endangering the health, safety or welfare of the
occupants or the public.
“First, we mail a courtesy notice to the owner of record,” the director says.
The owner has a brief period of no more than two weeks to respond to the county.
“We have to do due process, but these water violations are a serious matter to us,” states Rogers.
If
there has been no correspondence from the owner, a code enforcement
officer is sent to investigate the property. If the officer finds an
occupied dwelling with no potable water system, the owner receives a
formal notice of violation from the county. This notice orders the
owner to reconnect or repair the water supply within two weeks.
Silence
on the owner’s part brings the enforcement officer back to re-inspect
the property. This time the officer will document the violation with
photographs and prepare a report for the department. This results in
the dwelling’s being declared substandard, and an order to have it
vacated is issued.
The owner has 10 days to appeal.
Then the declaration and order to vacate letter is posted on the dwelling itself, and the occupant has 10 days to move out.
Signs prohibiting entrance to the property are posted.
Rogers estimates the process takes 30 to 45 days.
The
county and the Basin’s local water agencies all emphasize the
importance of customers contacting their billing offices as soon as
they think they might have trouble paying their bill.
Jennifer
Cusack, public information officer for Hi-Desert Water District in
Yucca Valley, notes that assistant programs are available for
low-income electric, gas, and landline telephone customers. Cusack
worries that those relief recipients sometimes fail to funnel the
savings toward their water bills.
However, “Water can’t be used
to evict people,” Cusack states. “A landlord can’t shut off water to a
tenant property and use that as an excuse to get them evicted.”
The
Joshua Basin Water District’s assistant general manager, Susan Greer,
says her office gets hundreds of calls each month from customers who
need to work out a payment schedule. However, the district still
carries out about 60 lock-offs a month.
“Lock-off day is the worst day of the month,” says Greer. “Everyone here feels bad about it.”
The assistant GM say some of these folks are “repeaters,” who get locked off and reconnected more than once.
“These poor people owe the delinquent bill, late penalties, a lock-off fee, a start-up fee and sometimes a double deposit.”
The
Bighorn-Desert View Water Agency in Landers has a variety of water
users in its geographically large but sparsely populated Homestead
Valley area. Some customers haul water from communal wells, but most of
them are on pressurized systems supplied by the agency.
Included
in adjacent Pioneertown and border areas between Landers, Joshua Tree
and Yucca Mesa are service districts that buy water directly from the
county.
“We’re a small agency and we all know a lot of our
customers personally,” observes agency secretary Joanne Keiter. “We are
open to communicate and work out billing schedules with them.”
While
Hi-Desert and Joshua Basin report several lock-offs a month, Bighorn
billing representative Michelle Corbin says the agency may perform only
two or three lock-offs in its bi-monthly billing period.
“Those have usually resulted from foreclosure or the death of the customer,” Corbin says.
These
local agencies do not inform the county when water is shut off, but
occasionally code enforcement or law enforcement will get involved.
During
a lock-off call, a field technician might find code violations, like
children living in an unsafe condition, or a yard full of dogs.
The
sheriff’s station gets involved if the meter lock is broken, resulting
in damage to the district’s property and the theft of water.
Yucca
Valley’s supervising code compliance officer, Jerry Megli, tells of
garden hoses being connected from a locked-off property to the outside
faucet of a compliant neighboring property.
“Sometimes kids
playing with other kids at a locked-off house will tell their parents
about something weird they saw, and we’ll get a call from those
parents,” Megli says.
However, the compliance officer says his
department’s goal is to get the water service reinstated. “We do not
evict people; we address the issue.”
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