Los Angeles DWP to end water and power shutoffs for low-income customers who can’t pay bill
People wait in line to pay their water bills as they are turned away from an LAX payment machine, Thursday, March 26, 2016. (Paul Rodriguez/The Press-Enterprise)
Photo: Paul Rodriguez
Homes on the verge of foreclosure or slated to be demolished are often shut off of water for nonpayment.
For the first time in nine years, Los Angeles County is putting an end to shutoffs for people who can’t pay their water and power bills.
The DWP said Thursday that it won’t continue to shut off the water of people who can’t pay their bills.
The agency will replace the shutoff with a payment system that is “fair and equitable and consistent with long-standing practice,” the DWP announced.
Some families in need still might be cut off, depending on their debt load and a home worth more than they owe, the DWP said.
The shutoffs, which started as an experiment in 2010 and were meant to replace the program at the beginning of the financial year, led to about 40,000 people being shut off from water, officials said.
“We have no choice but to continue this program,” DWP Board of Director Member Joe Berrios of West Covina told the Press-Enterprise. “The program was never sustainable, and the costs are too high.”
The DWP announced the changes this morning at the Los Angeles Unified School District on Mission Drive, about 15 miles north of the city.
The changes will mean paying for water in installments.
Under a new payment system starting in September 2018, the DWP will ask a delinquent customer to make up the difference over three successive months to make up the difference.
The new payment system is called the “Pay and Quit” and the DWP aims to make it “fair and equitable and consistent with long-standing practice.”
The DWP is replacing the existing “Payment In Lie
