Water-Saving Certification at a Trickle in Burbank

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Hundreds of businesses and apartment building owners in Burbank are scrambling to meet an Oct. 31 deadline to certify to the city that they have installed water-saving faucets, showerheads and toilets in their buildings. Those that don’t meet the deadline face a 25 percent surcharge on their water bills starting Nov. 1.

Burbank imposed the program last year as the Southern California region was in the midst of a drought. The Burbank Water and Power agency sent out notices to its 6,000 commercial, industrial and multifamily residential customers in January informing them of the deadline for installing the water-saving devices.

Each business or multifamily building owner must complete a form certifying that they have installed the water-saving devices; those forms must be filed by Oct. 31. Otherwise, the 25 percent surcharge will go into effect Nov. 1. The surcharge will remain in effect until a customer files the certification form. After 12 months, the surcharge increases to 50 percent of the monthly water bill.

As of late last week, only about 60 percent of the business and multifamily building owner customers had submitted their certification, according to Jeanette Meyer, marketing manager at Burbank Water and Power.

“We’re hoping there’s a mad dash to the end line, because we don’t want to have to assess a surcharge on anyone,” Meyer said.

The program requires that business customers certify that all their showerheads have a maximum water flow of 2.5 gallons per minute, kitchen faucets two gallons per minute, other faucets one gallon per minute and toilets a maximum of 1.6 gallons per minute.

Meyer said the city has handed out thousands of free low-flow showerheads and faucet aerators.

For more information, customers can log on to BurbankWaterandPower.com/water-conservation.

New L.A. Fee?

Businesses and building owners in Los Angeles that are accused of building code violations or so-called “nuisance” issues might be billed if city inspectors come out to look at their property and find problems.

Currently, when Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety inspectors respond to a complaint about possible building code violations, such as unpermitted construction, or nuisance violations, such as lights shining on a neighboring property, the department doesn’t assess an inspection fee. Los Angeles City Councilman Ed Reyes wants to change this. He has asked the department to consider a fee-based enforcement system, in which a charge would be assessed for every inspection visit that turned up a violation.

“The Department of Building and Safety deploys staff resources to conduct inspection of structures and investigate complaints of potential code violations,” Reyes said in his Sept. 24 motion. “As the city continues to face significant fiscal challenges, we must look for ways to ensure that costs for the services provided by the Code Enforcement Program are charged and recovered.”

So far, only one person has commented on Reyes’ motion: business management consultant J.H. McQuiston, who characterizes the proposal as a tax masquerading as a fee.

Safety Crackdown

Under a law just signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, state regulators now have enhanced powers to go after serious workplace safety and health violations.

The law, AB 2774, clarifies the definitions of serious violations and sets out procedures to notify employers that if a workplace problem is not remedied in a timely manner, they will be subject to a serious violation and fines could run to $25,000 per day.

“The previous definition was inadequate and made it exceedingly difficult to prove that a serious violation existed,” said John Duncan, director of the Department of Industrial Relations, who oversees the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration. “This significant clarification will allow Cal/OSHA to better identify serious violations, as well as provide improved guidance for the appeals board in cases where the issuance of a serious citation is in question.”

Poster Time

All California employers are required to post new workers’ compensation posters or face up to $7,000 in fines.

The new “Notice to Employees: Injuries Caused by Work” poster is the result of a regulation enacted in January by the state Division of Workers’ Compensation. The notice spells out the different types of workers’ compensation benefits available to injured workers and provides related information.

The deadline to display the new poster in the workplace was Oct. 8.

Employers must also distribute pamphlets to all employees hired after Oct. 8 detailing the workers’ compensation benefits available to them.

For more information, contact your local chamber or the California Chamber of Commerce.

Staff reporter Howard Fine can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 227.

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Howard Fine
Howard Fine is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Business Journal. He covers stories pertaining to healthcare, biomedicine, energy, engineering, construction, and infrastructure. He has won several awards, including Best Body of Work for a single reporter from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers and Distinguished Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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