The statewide drought and the mandatory restrictions that have resulted from it are causing the LA Department of Water and Power to get personal with water users, especially those residents who are among the top one percent of water guzzlers. Since the middle of May, says the LA Times, about 4,600 letters have gone out to inform recipients of their over-the-top water use and telling them to "carefully look at [their] water habits and take steps to reduce [their] water consumption." Some neighborhoods got a lot of those notes.
Breaking down all the letters according to the neighborhoods where they were sent, the four areas that received the most LADWP notes were all posh Westside neighborhoods: Brentwood (607 letters), Bel Air (525), Beverly Crest (481), and Pacific Palisades (319). (It's been shown that wealthy people generally use way more water at their homes than less affluent people, in part because they often have more space to water.)
1,215 messages were sent to the Valley, with Encino alone getting over 550 (big lots and high temperatures are probably factors there). An LADWP rep said that some people who received notices chalked their heavy water use up to "large lots, leaks, big families and water-intensive fruit trees." The water consumption totals were calculated using figures from May 2014 to April 2015.
Here's the neighborhood breakdown for warning letters from the LAWDP:
· Another DWP bill? No: 'You are in the top 1% of all residential water users' [LAT]
· Trickle-down aquanomics [LAT]
· Study: Rich LA Neighborhoods Are Using More Water Than Everyone Else [Curbed LA]
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