Karen Lewis knows about water problems.
In Compton, residents have been living with foul-smelling brown water because the cost of fixing the pipes is high, and many can’t afford to buy a constant supply of bottled water.
First proposed by Democratic state Sen. Bill Monning of Carmel as a mandatory tax, it didn’t muster the necessary two-thirds vote for passage, and Monning scaled it back.
Associations representing those industries endorsed the bill, in part because the paying companies would have been protected from having to clean tainted water of nitrates.
Legislators estimated that together the two bills could have raised more than $100 million a year.
The measures wouldn’t have solved all the state’s drinking-water problems, but money from both could have been used for operations, not just infrastructure projects, said Phoebe Seaton, co-director of the nonprofit Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, based in Fresno .
“That means helping … some districts get solvent so they can apply for grants,” she said.
“This is a social issue for the state of California, and the state should do something about it,” Tuck said.
“I had one city tell me it would be over a million dollars just to change their system.” Many customers might not even have known they’d paid an additional fee, she said, particularly if they used an auto-pay feature.
And if customers paid the voluntary charge without meaning to, they could have had their money refunded, setting off another complicated accounting procedure, Tuck said.