ACTEW would like to move towards tenants getting water bills, rather than landlords, without increasing overall charges, its chief executive, Dr Mike Sargeant, said yesterday.
This would help conservation in the long run and bring down overall costs, but he said it was a complex matter and would take at least a year.
He was responding to criticism for the Landlords Association over Thursday’s announced changes to water billing.
At present about 30,000 of the ACT’s 100,000 households are tenanted. At present these people do not see a water bill, but under most tenancies excess water charges get passed on to them.
The president of the Landlords Association, Peter Jansen, says for efficiency and conservation the bill should go to the user direct, who would respond to larger bills with conservation. Landlords should reduce their rents accordingly _ he estimated by $1.70 a week.
“”A third of the ACT is not getting water bills and so will not be responsive to conservation,” he said.
However, he thought Thursday’s change was a step in the right direction.
Under the new price regime there would be an access fee of $130 a year and then 28 cents a kilolitres for up to the first 350 kilolitres and 64 cents a kilolitres thereafter. Under the old regime there was a flat access charge of $208 a year, the first 350 kilolitres were free and every kilolitre thereafter was 59 cents.
Under the new regime people using less than 350 kilolitres (the Canberra average) will pay less and those using more than 350 kilolitres will pay more.
Dr Sargeant says after extensive surveying ACTEW found that the great majority wanted users to start paying from the first drop so that careful users could be rewarded. This would result in the ACT being able to delay the building of another dam.
The new billing would do this. Legislation, however, required bills to be sent to the owner of the block.
The issue is complicated by units which are not separated metered. At present the whole block is metered, and the plumbing which weaves in and out of bathrooms and kitchens makes the units impossible to meter separately. There are about 10,000 units in Canberra.
Dr Sargeant said under the new regime each unit would be charged about $180, a saving of $36. The charge was based on consumption estimates.