See video from a massive fish kill on the lower Neuse River near New Bern, N.C. Video by staff photojournalist Chuck Liddy.

Among the items on tomorrow's City Council agenda is a proposal that would require new Raleigh water customers to pay a $100 deposit to get service. Raleigh currently does not require customers to put a deposit down before opening a water and sewer account.

But the city’s Public Utilities and Finance departments say the amount of people skipping out on their water bills has risen in recent years, particularly in the last few months as the economy has deteriorated.

City staff is recommending that new residential and commercial customers be required to put down a $100 deposit beginning Dec. 1. That's the date when the city will switch over to tiered-water rates for residential customers and move to monthly billing, two features made possible by new billing software. Existing customers would not be subject to the deposit ordinance unless they have a poor credit history with the city.

Between 1999 and 2008 the annual amount of bills going unpaid to the Utilities Department has increased from $543,371 to $1,226,850. The utility system’s revenues increased from $37.6 million to $89.3 million during that same period.

The city disconnects on average 1,720 accounts per month with an average bill of $100. Over the last year about $30,000 of unpaid utility bills were due to bankruptcies and about $370,000 was due to bad checks or over-drafts, according to the city. In a memo to the City Council, Chief Financial Officer Perry James and Public Utilities Director Dale Crisp said that “the current economic situation only exacerbates the ability to collect on accounts that have gone in to delinquent status.”

Most other utilities in the Triangle do require new customers to put down a deposit. OWASA and Durham charge $50. Cary charges $60 but will soon raise its deposit to $150.

Raleigh already charges new water and sewer customers a $50 new service fee, meaning residents would need $150 to get service hooked up. The city’s proposal would allow for new customers to have the deposit spread over several bills.

The City Council meets at 1 p.m. Tuesday in City Hall, 222 W. Hargett Street. At 7 p.m the council will hold a public hearing to discuss City Manager Russell Allen's budget proposal.

Durham water customers are going to be getting a Public Notice of bad stuff in their water, but not to worry — according to city authorities.

"We think now we've licked the problem," water director Don Greeley said this afternoon.

^{Most reporters are not mathematicians.}

^{I certainly am not. That is why I ask questions when it comes to stories involving those pesky numbers that made me cringe in college. Recently, I spoke to a Johnston County town manager to get clarification on estimates involving a water project.}

^{After a few minutes, the town manager obviously seemed annoyed with me. I guess my math skills were not clicking as fast as he would have liked. His tone of voice changed, he sighed loudly several times over the telephone and made a remark that he could not have explained it any easier to me.}

^{Sorry, but I did not go to college to become a math whiz. Numbers take me a little bit longer to comprehend than vowels and nouns. I could have just gone on my assumptions, printed the numbers and got everything wrong. But instead, I went straight to the source, asked a few questions, got the right information and wrote my story.}

^{I guess the town manager didn’t see it that way.}

Some people might get the impression that the Town of Clayton is more concerned about water consumption than animals. Sound ridiculous?

New rules require owners of new landscaping to obtain a permit if they want to irrigate more often than current rules allow. For the first offense, Clayton will fine you $250. If you tether a dog, the town will fine you $50 the first time. In other words, it is a worse crime irrigate new landscaping without the proper permits than it is to let a dog be chained to a tree outside for possibly several hours.

I don’t think the town intended for people to view the new ordinances negatively. But, for animal lovers like myself, the low violation cost sends the wrong message. I’ve never been a fan of tethering dogs. If you can, install a fence or dog run or keep them enclosed. Owners can crate-train their dogs if they do not want their dog running loose. If you need to tether the dog to wash the car or mow the lawn, that is fine. But leaving a dog tethered all day is unacceptable.

Of course, residents should obey the rules for irrigating new landscaping. But if you irrigate new landscaping without the permit on a wrong day, you get slapped with fines up to $500. You will also face the threat of your water being shut off for 45 days. Fines don’t get that high for animal cruelty. But perhaps, it is time they should.

The Wake Forest Board of Commissioners unanimously (5 to 0) approved a 55 acre annexation that , according to Raleigh City Manager J. Russell Allen, would create a "huge issue" for the completion of the Little River watershed, Allen wrote in a strongly worded letter to the town.

The land, near the intersection of Capital Boulevard and Jenkins Road,
is next door to an established subdivision and in the Falls Lake
watershed. Raleigh is opposed to allowing any water and sewer lines into the property.

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Running lines into the watershed willy-nilly could jeopardize Raleigh's credibility with the state and the feds when it needs to get approvals for the Little River Reservoir.

No problem, Wake Forest said, we've already got lines out there. According to chief planner Chip Russell, Wake Forest ran water and sewer lines to the property pre-merger with Raleigh, assuming the land would eventually be annexed.

Reached by phone Allen said, even with existing lines the Tuesday vote could hurt approvals.

"It puts them and us in a difficult situation."

Wendell commissioners retreated from the first hot potato of the new board's term. 

At issue was a request by Central Baptist Church to hook onto a water line that has been extended to the edge of its property.

Raleigh, however, requires that such water lines must reach further than that. In fact, they must go to the farthest point on the property. The idea is you leave the water line at the next guy's doorstep so he can develop his property when the time comes.

But in Central Baptist's case, they've extended their finances about as far as they can and the added cost of extending the line - more than $100,000, is more than they can manage.

Complicating matters is the fact that the church embarked on this development project before Wendell gave its water and sewer system away to Raleigh. City leaders asked the Wendell town board to explain how it would have ruled if the request had come before Raleigh took over the system.

But town commissioners punted. They went behind closed doors to talk about their options and then agreed to repeat to Raleigh what the town's policy was at the time with no indication how they would have dealt with this particular matter.

And because they spent some 25 minutes or so behind closed doors, the public doesn't know what options they considered.

And Central Baptist Church has a nice new building with no water and no relief in sight. 

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