GILBERT — When Peggie Cornwell learned last month that the $10 monthly fee for "flood irrigation" would be going up, her reaction was fairly straightforward.
"We were a little surprised when we got that notice, but we said: 'Oh, well, everything else is going up. I guess this is, too.' "
But she was stunned when she heard that the Town Council had decided to pull the plug on the year-watering service two years from now.
She said her entire family, which lives in a house that's been in her husband's family since 1950, enjoys the greenery of the three-quarters-acre lot. And 16-month-old granddaughter Shorey enjoys splashing around when the yard is covered with 3 inches of water.
Gilbert has operated this irrigation system since 1974, providing water from the Salt River Project watershed to 114 properties within a square mile at the historic heart of Gilbert, at Gilbert and Elliot roads.
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The monthly fee has been $10 since 1974. In recent years, the town has been subsidizing the service from its general fund by up to $36,000 annually, depending on how the staff time spent delivering the water is calculated. The council decided in April that it wanted to see a plan to shift the full cost of the service to the customers.
At the Aug. 5 council meeting, Town Manager George Pettit came back with a plan to raise the fee to $15 a month by Jan. 1, 2009, $21 a year later, and to $30 monthly a year after that. Also, customers would be required to sign up for a year's worth of deliveries in advance, rather than be able to order on a month-to-month basis. He said that for the town to break even, users would need to pay $50 a month, assuming none of the 114 dropped out.
But Councilman Don Skousen asked whether the town was under any obligation to provide the service at all.
"I think we need to get out of the business, because it's unfair to everyone else," he said.
Skousen said that if customers want to continue flooding their yards, they need to make their own deals with the Salt River Project.
The council voted 7-0 to discontinue the service on Jan. 1, 2011.
Paul Cherrington, manager of water engineering and transmission for the Salt River Project, said the Gilbert area is within the SRP's irrigation service area, but the utility is not interested in taking over this or any other private system right now.
"If we were to take over that system, first of all we have to do an assessment of the private system," he said. "It could be in good condition, or it could need a lot of maintenance. We don't have the work force to do that kind of work right now."
Several other East Valley municipalities operate what Pettit termed "legacy" irrigation systems for older neighborhoods. Tempe considered two years ago whether to raise user fees for an irrigation system that waters historic neighborhoods around Arizona State University in order for it to break even.
In 2006, the Tribune reported the average customer on that system was paying $330 a year for the service, and a city study showed the true cost was $840 a year. The Tempe City Council voted at the time to raise user fees by $120 to $150 a year.
