How Many Memberships Are Needed For a
Property
The current bylaws state one membership is needed for each property.
If you have more than one permitted residence on the same tax parcel,
they can share the same membership, although OWU requires that there is
a separate
meter on each house to help identify leaks and to gather information on
guest houses etc.
Each habitable structure (connection)
will count as one ERU towards our system limit
of 165.
The fee and rate schedule is structured so that it becomes economical
for a member to buy
separate memberships for each house, if too much water is used with
several houses on the same property.
This makes it reasonably fair for people with one house vs multiple on
the same membership.
Restaurants, B&Bs and all business and home combinations still only
need one membership per tax parcel number.
The State Dept of Health guidelines allow some flexibility in the
counting of ERUs for different
types of customers, but for our small system one ERU per habitable
structure is simple and effective.
All connections are metered, so if a particular business uses more
water than a typical residence,
they will have to pay more.
It is the State that sets the limit on the number of habitable
structures that are connected to our system.
It is the OWU members who have set up the bylaws to allow multiple
connections on the same
property to use the same membership.
A member may have more than one membership on the same tax parcel if
they plan to sub divide at some time.
The bylaws allow the board to decide if OWU will buy back a membership,
if a member chooses to return it.
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