Paso Robles’ water saga begins anew

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• Residents get new rates for water use

  Residents get new rates for water use

  Water customers in Atascadero will see their monthly bills increase this week by an average of 7.5 percent. The Atascadero Mutual Water Company’s Board of Directors earlier this month adopted water rate hikes that include a surcharge for the Nacimiento Water Project after a previous funding plan fell through.

  Under the new rates, which went into effect Wednesday, the monthly water bill for an average single-family residential customer will increase from $44.45 to $48.15 per month while an average business user’s bill will increase from $54.99 to $56.68. An average single-family residence uses 11,000 gallons of water per month, while an average business uses 19,000 gallons, according to the utility. Tiers in the rate system encourage conservation, so those who use more water pay more.

  Increases for all users, minus fire connections, include a $2.50 surcharge per meter that the utility’s Board of Directors also approved to help fund the community’s share in the Nacimiento pipeline.

• Nipomo Mesa voters face decision on water pipeline

  Nipomo Mesa voters face decision on water pipeline

  Over the next seven weeks, property owners on the Nipomo Mesa will have a chance to vote on whether to pay for construction of a pipeline to bring water to the community from Santa Maria.

  The Nipomo Community Services District, which is leading efforts to form an assessment district to pay for the pipeline, will mail ballots to residents by March 23 asking whether they will agree to levy a tax to cover the pipeline’s estimated $25.9 million capital cost.

  The ballot period will be open until the close of a May 9 public hearing; a majority of the returned ballots is required for passage. District board members voted unanimously Wednesday to start the balloting process.

• Grover Beach water rates would rise 10 percent unless 2,400 protest

  Grover Beach water rates would rise 10 percent unless 2,400 protest

  A 10 percent water-rate increase would take effect in April in Grover Beach unless more than half of the city’s property owners or water customers say they oppose it.

  Grover Beach officials say the increase is needed to cover basic operational and maintenance costs, re-establish a reserve fund and close an estimated $196,186 deficit in the water fund budget.

  The budget for the water fund was adopted with a deficit, but city officials had planned to close it by repaying a $900,000 loan the water fund had made to the city’s former Redevelopment Agency several years ago, City Manager Bob Perrault said.

• Citizens group challenges Paso Robles leaders

  Citizens group challenges Paso Robles leaders

  Paso Robles has been hit in recent years with a host of problems that haven’t resonated well with some taxpayers. Those problems prompted two city residents to form the group Change Paso Robles Now, which plans to push the City Council for an audit of all departments.

• Letters to the Editor 4/6

  Letters to the Editor 4/6

  Americans and death

  There is a haunting reality to the U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales story. A weird dynamic gets linked to the American psyche when the horrors of war occur, especially when it concerns the boy next door. It brought to mind My Lai in Vietnam, torture at Abu Ghraib, the family at Haditha in Iraq, 16 innocents in Afghanistan murdered by a U.S. soldier.

  This act seems to have shaken the American public; good that violence can still shake us up. The inescapable question, if contemporary war is viewed objectively, is: What makes such an incident a crime? What makes it different from large-scale civilian killings ordered by military action? What makes My Lai different from aerial napalming of entire villages? What makes Haditha different from the untold thousands of Iraqi civilians, including children, who died as “collateral damage”? The half-million children under the age of 5 who died as a result of Americaninspired U.N. sanctions, and the scores of civilians killed by drones?