Get Off the List

Publishing a list of the top residential water users on the South Fork each summer has become a tradition for The Express News Group. It’s an unenviable list to be on and was given the name “Water Hogs of the Hamptons” with the express purpose of getting under the skin of the homeowners who use as much as 100 times the amount of water as the average household, perhaps influencing them to rein in their water use.

Despite the misconception that the Suffolk County Water Authority puts out this list annually, “Water Hogs” is this organization’s initiative, using data obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request. SCWA uses a less offensive moniker, “superusers,” to describe these homeowners and does not publish the data itself.

The public reaction each year is always mixed, with some readers leaving comments shaming the so-called “superusers” and others shaming the newspaper for calling the superusers out. The latter generally include the observation, “If they’re paying for it, it’s nobody else’s business.”

But that attitude glosses over a couple of key facts.

The reality is, when a few homeowners cause water demand to spike to beyond what the system can comfortably handle, we all pay. The SCWA installs new infrastructure to keep up with demand, including wells and water towers, and that cost is spread out among all users. The superusers are paying more than the average ratepayer — but nowhere near enough to cover the true cost of their excess.

When infrastructure can’t keep up, water pressure is lost, and this has consequences much more dire than an unsatisfactory shower. It can be the difference between a fire department quickly extinguishing a blaze, thus saving a house, and that house being destroyed, and the fire continuing to spread. It can be the difference between life and death for firefighters and civilians.

It must never get to that point here, especially for silly reasons, such as an estate “needing” acres of green lawn in the middle of August.

There are easy ways for the “Water Hogs” to drop off the list. Estate owners with expansive turfgrass lawns that are only tread on when they are being mowed can reduce their lawn space, replacing lawn with native plants that don’t require fertilizer or supplemental water and will beautify a space while improving the local ecology.

Estates that still use open-loop geothermal heating and cooling can update these wasteful and antiquated systems to closed-loop systems that reuse water rather than constantly dumping it.

SCWA now has a tiered rate structure, which means paying an elevated price for each gallon used in a quarter beyond a certain amount. But for the owners of massive estates, this difference in price is negligible. The authority has been toying, for a few years, with the idea of a third tier just for superusers. In practicality, superusers wouldn’t bat an eye at the increased cost — even if their rate is tripled, it would be a pittance as far as they are concerned.

But maybe piercing the third tier will be that final nudge that makes them realize it’s time they get off the “Water Hogs” list.