• William Walker

• Steve Holldber

• Jeff Chojnacki

• Nancy Pearlman

• Larry Kopald

What do these Idyllwild Water District customers have in common?

They’re sucking up most of the water in Idyllwild, preventing other customers from getting water meters and keeping IWD in Water Emergency Stage 2.

That’s got to be the answer.

Because, in order to get a bill for $1,000, they would need to use 4,600 cubic feet or 34,000 gallons of water a month.

Do you know about the Drip Calculator? Yes, the U.S. Geological Survey has one at http://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-drip.html.

I calculated these figures: Let’s assume each of the five people above has one home and three faucets. Each of those three faucets is dripping at the rate of 120 drips a minute. That’s a lot of dripping going on in these five homes.

According to the Drip Calculator, they each would waste 12,497 gallons. But wait — that’s not per month; that’s per year.

So these five must be real water hounds — maybe selling off their water to bottling companies like Paul Black did years ago; or building lakes in their backyards; or brewing a whole lot more beer than Don Put; or irrigating lots of pot farms.

I mean, geez, that’s about 200,000 gallons of water that just disappeared. That’s the equivalent of 62 percent of the district’s water loss in May.

And that’s just those five. What about the others who haven’t spoken up?

Removing tongue out of cheek, don’t you think if someone was using 34,000-plus gallons in just one month the district would be more concerned about whether their equipment was faulty?