OAKLAND (KRON) — The East Bay Municipal Utility District on Wednesday is apologizing to customers who were named on their monthly list of people using too much water.
EBMUD told KRON4 News that at least two of its customers who appeared on January’s list of Excessive Water Use Ordinance violators in a 60-day billing cycle had used thousands of gallons of water over several months. In other words, same amount of water, longer period of time.
“We apologize, it was unintended and it was an oversight of the district,” said an EBMUD official.
The mistake was first reported by the Contra Costa Times on Wednesday.
Being in violation of EBMUD’s excessive use ordinance is a misdemeanor and subject to a $2 penalty for each unit over the 80 unit threshold, about 59,800 gallons of water over a 60-day billing cycle.
The ordinance went into effect as a response to the state’s devastating drought.
It’s unclear if any other customers were inaccurately named to the list. There were more than 4,000 customers on January’s list of violators, and the agency said it may take a few weeks to figure out if there are any more miscalculations.
In the future, the agency plans to include some way to denote which customers are on a modified cycle.
EBMUD hopes to have a corrected list ranking the top water users for January sometime next week.
The list was obtained by several Bay Area media outlets through a public record request.