2005 California Water Utility Billing Project

Objective: to better understand how the amount and type of information given on water bills affect residential water demand.

The 2-page questionnaire can be completed and submitted electronically.  The completed form can be returned by pressing the SUBMIT button at the bottom of the second page from any computer connected to the internet.  If you prefer you may print and fax/mail the completed questionnaire and any attachments.
To fill out this questionnaire, you will need a sample water bill, the 2004 water rates and your annual revenue and sales for residential water users.

Click HERE for the online version of the questionnaire
Click HERE for the print version of the questionnaire

Benefits to participating utilities: you will be able to access and use the full set of statistics obtained from this survey so you can compare your utility to others. You will also receive the draft reports on the analysis. Make sure you check the corresponding boxes on the questionaire and give us an email so we can give you access to these documents when they are completed. We hope that our study will be useful to inform your decisions and help garner support in matters related to conservation activities, billing practices, and rate changes. It may also be used to refine your projections on water consumption to better plan and/or finance future capital improvements.

Given the small number of utilities that qualified for the survey, the quality of our analysis depends heavily on your participation. We appreciate your kind cooperation.

The information that you provide will remain confidential. We will assign a random ID to each record before the information is entered into a computer for analysis. At that point each record will be entirely anonymous. We need to complete this phase of our project as soon as possible and appreciate your collaboration in this matter.

Sincerely,

Sylvestre Gaudin
Oberlin College, Dept. of Economics
10 N. Professor St
Oberlin, OH 44074
Telephone: 440-775-8483
Fax: 440-775-6978

Professor Gaudin's Home Page