05-03-2013, 08:48 PM
My suggestion: learn how to read your water meter, know what your average usage is and check the figures every so often to make sure everything is normal. The minute something looks weird, call a plumber or the water department. Seems to me that if pipes are leaking enough to run up $4,000 over two months, the homeowner would notice a drop in water pressure at the tap - another sign that something's amiss.
Why should the county be responsible for maintaining pipes on your private property? If there was a problem on your property on "their side" of the meter, how would they ever know about it? Problems in main lines become pretty evident because they cause big disruptions, but as you mention, the comparatively small lines to homes can have leaks that aren't apparent from the surface. So county water customers (or maybe even county residents as a whole, including those of us who don't have access to county water) would have to eat the cost for all the ongoing undetected waster waste as well as the cost of maintaining all those extra miles of water lines on private property.
I think a more realistic solution would be for the county to enact some sort of "customer protection program," where you could decide to pay an extra monthly fee as an insurance policy, and if problems did occur, the program would cover the cost of the water wasted. It might also cover the repair of the pipe, though they might need to have a sliding scale so that people with shorter pipe runs would pay less than people with longer runs.
Why should the county be responsible for maintaining pipes on your private property? If there was a problem on your property on "their side" of the meter, how would they ever know about it? Problems in main lines become pretty evident because they cause big disruptions, but as you mention, the comparatively small lines to homes can have leaks that aren't apparent from the surface. So county water customers (or maybe even county residents as a whole, including those of us who don't have access to county water) would have to eat the cost for all the ongoing undetected waster waste as well as the cost of maintaining all those extra miles of water lines on private property.
I think a more realistic solution would be for the county to enact some sort of "customer protection program," where you could decide to pay an extra monthly fee as an insurance policy, and if problems did occur, the program would cover the cost of the water wasted. It might also cover the repair of the pipe, though they might need to have a sliding scale so that people with shorter pipe runs would pay less than people with longer runs.