Chartered in 1912, the Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) was the first municipal water district in California. Today, MMWD serves 185,000 people in a 147 square-mile area of south and central Marin County. Our mission is to manage our natural resources in a sustainable manner and to provide our customers with reliable, high quality water at a reasonable price. Visit us at marinwater.org.
Written by staff at MMWD, “Think Blue Marin” explores all things water in south and central Marin—water supplies, conservation, new projects, watershed management and more. In addition, our goal is to provide a forum for online dialogue between the water district and our customers.
We welcome your feedback. Please note that MMWD reserves the right to edit comments for length, clarity, libel and civility, and to remove any comments that are inappropriate or off-topic. All comments are published at the discretion of MMWD.
I want to know
“How to make my payment on line using American Express Credit
Card”.
Appreciate for your prompt guidance and instruction ASAP”.
Thank you for your comment. To sign up for electronic billing, click here: https://www.billonline.com/MMWD/login.aspx
Enter your customer number and name exactly as they appear on your invoice. If you are having trouble, please call 415-945-1485 (7:30 AM – 4:00 PM, M-F), or email your customer number and last name to webaccounts@marinwater.org. We will contact you the next business day.
Note: We’ve edited your comment to remove your account information. For your own protection, we recommend not sharing that information publicly.
Hi,
I don’t know where else on your site to ask a question, so sorry if it’s not in the right place, but here goes. (I’ll post it on other community sites just in case you’re not monitoring here.)
Why does my hot tap water smell perfumed?
It has had this characteristic for years and I’ve always meant to find out why . . . .
Thanks!
Thank you for your comment. We checked with our Water Quality Lab, and they haven’t heard of this situation before. If you are concerned, you can contact the lab for a follow-up at 945-1550
Mesquitos: I have a small drainage off the hill running along the side of my yard. What can I do to deal with the mesquitos breeding in that still water? Thanks,
Thanks for your comment, Stan. We recommend that you contact the Marin / Sonoma Mosquito & Vector Control District: http://www.msmosquito.com/
Good luck!
Hey nice web site blog. I really dont belong to any blogs (up untill now) but was pleasantly suprised to see this web site while researching botnaical info within Marin. Fresh rain monday again possible…….have a swell day MMWD and folks
Thanks, Robert!
Jim:
I run an asset management company and was wondering what rules your organization operates under to be able to mislead your rate payers.
I have never tried to do this in my industry as I would be behind bars.
Is there no SEC for municipal companies? Can you say what every suits your interests?
As I recall 70% to 90% of your budget goes to salaries, pensions, and benefits.
How do you get to exclude this from your Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Expenditures? I missed this accounting course at Wharton Business School.
Right on the front page of ‘Where Do Your Rate Dollars Go?’ you state that $.81 of each rate payer dollar goes directly toward the cost of our water system – that is, the collection, treatment and distribution of water, and the maintenance and replacement of our facilities.’
I guess you just allocate all the salaries and entitlements to these buckets. Did you and Bernie Madoff take the same accounting courses?
I have read a few financial reports in my day and it sounds like you might be getting ready to raise rates again.
No surprise, as I explained to your CFO ‘elasticity of demand’. ‘When you raise prices 30% in three years to cover entitlements, demand falls’.
See your rate payers do not have guaranteed salaries and benefits so we have to cut back when you raise prices to pay your employees 2 to 3’xs what your average rate payer earns.
Why don’t you just come clean and put the following after ‘Where Do Your Rate Dollars Go?’
Our employees earn 2-3x’s what our rate payers earn when taking into account their entitlements
We have done nothing to stop the escalation of these entitlements.
We will do nothing to stop this, because if we cut their entitlements we cut our own entitlements.
Therefore we keep raising rates.
We lie and say there is a water shortage so we can raise rates.
Then we lie and say that demand is down due to conservation so we can raise rates.
We were going to lie and say that we need a desalination plant so we can raise rates.
The bottom line is that MMWD is an entitlement program masquerading as a water company.
Hopefully you will not figure this out.
Dear Mr. Webb,
Your comments cover several topics, including MMWD’s governance and authority, employee wages and benefits, and water rates.
Regarding MMWD’s governance and authority, MMWD is a form of local government that, like a school district or a fire district, is a single-purpose entity. Our charter, which comes from the State of California, is to provide drinking water. The district is governed by a publicly elected five-member board of directors whose authority to operate the district and secure funding for that operation comes from our charter.
Regarding employee salaries and benefits, MMWD’s policy is to compensate employees in the middle range of the scale for public sector jobs. Periodic salary surveys are conducted to confirm that we adhere to that range.
As we have stated, $0.81 of each rate payer dollar goes directly toward the cost of our water system; that is, the collection, treatment and distribution of water and the maintenance and replacement of facilities. That work requires employees, so the majority of MMWD’s jobs are directly related to operating and/or maintaining the water system. As a percentage, salaries and benefits are 35 percent of the FY 2010/11 total budget.
Also, you may be interested in this 2010 CNN report on a study comparing compensation for public and private sector employees. Here is the link:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/28/news/economy/public_workers_earn_less/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
Regarding rates, MMWD’s water rates are in the middle for Bay Area water suppliers according to an independent study by water industry consultant Black and Veatch. MMWD did not pay for the study. It is one Black and Veatch conducts on a periodic basis on its own.
While MMWD has raised rates for each of the last four years, we raised rates only three times in the previous 13 years. If you look at our rate history for that time period (1994-2009), MMWD’s rates increased 32 percent, while the Bay Area Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 50 percent. As of today, the cost of water from MMWD is half-a-cent per gallon.
MMWD’s goal is to reduce costs while continuing to meet state health laws for public water systems and with minimal impacts on service levels. Over the past two years we have reduced costs by implementing a hiring freeze on vacant positions, furloughing staff, dramatically reducing overtime, reducing capital spending and suspending conservation rebates. In the current fiscal year our budget is down from its original version by $24.7 million in savings and reductions.
This coming fiscal year we are looking at additional cost reductions in employee expenses and other areas.
We have long since installed a high tech, automated (complete with rain sensor) sprinkling system. Would Charlene please take us off the weekly reminder.
Hi, Stephen. Thanks for all you are doing to help conserve our water supply! We have removed your name from our email list.