By Niki Cervantes
Staff Writer

June 19, 2015 -- Due to a “computer glitch,” the City of Santa Monica sent letters to most customers with the wrong information about usage under the city’s mandated water-reduction program, officials said Thursday.

The erroneous information was sent to 12,000 of the City's customers in letters detailing how much water each user was allotted to reduce overall consumption by 20 percent, the City’s goal, said Debbie Lee, the spokesperson for the City.

The erroneous letters started arriving in mailboxes earlier this week, she said.  That’s when City officials began receiving telephone calls about the problem, Lee said.

The City started sending out the correct information Thursday. Those letters should arrive early next week, she said.

“It was a simple data mistake, more of a computer error, a computer glitch,” Lee said, adding that the letters were not bills.

Lee said she didn’t know if the wrong numbers over-estimated or under-estimated future water usage.

It is unclear why most customers received incorrect information and some 5,000 may have received correct information.

Customers are being advised to wait until the new letter arrives before calling about concerns they may have, since the City isn’t equipped to handle a high volume of calls, Lee said.

“We don’t want them to go down that road if they don’t need to,” she said.

Lee also encouraged customers to go to www.smgov.net/water  for the answers to basic questions about the program.

The City is under mandate by the state Water Resources Control Board to cut consumption by 20 percent by December of next year. The reductions are part of the state’s effort to fight one of California’s worst droughts ever.

In addition, the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) is asking the City to cut back on the water it supplies by 14 percent through June 2016.

Santa Monica’s program, which began earlier this month, sets thresholds of residential water use.

A single family household is limited to a “water conservation threshold” of 22 hundred cubic feet per billing period. The threshold is 11 hundred cubic feet per unit per billing period for apartment dwellers and other multi-family customers, officials have said.

Customers who are at or under the thresholds do not need to make changes, but those who exceed them could face penalties.