Clinton Leong, 92, of Sacramento, peered into an alley behind his T Street home the other day to watch a city crew busy at work. He was about to be an important footnote in Sacramento’s water history, one of the last Sacramentans to be forced by California to have his water use measured. Sacramento’s opposition to the metering of water is one of the policy cornerstones of the city. Voters in 1920 went so far as to cement the prohibition of residential water measurement into Sacramento’s city charter. But as the 20th Century was coming to a close, an emerging conservation ethic was isolating a Sacramento without water limits. The city fought back against meters, but eventually, it was forced into measurement in 2004. Sacramento’s opposition to water meters appears to have been a political stunt for a single election that hung around for decades.
—Tom Philp, editorial writer and columnist with The Sacramento Bee