Brief: State looks at apartment water bills

Friday, Dec. 18, 1998 | 2:37 a.m.

The commission will solicit comments in the wake of a request from Camden Property Trust for an advisory opinion on the matter. Camden, which owns and operates 42 Oasis residential apartment complexes in Southern Nevada that are home to more than 33,000 people, has since asked the PUC for a withdrawal of its petition.

Because the original Camden request raised a thorny issue, the commission agreed to investigate on a greater scale.

At issue is whether apartment operators are functioning in the role of a utility by forcing residents of apartments to pay an equal share of their complexes' water bills. The cost of inserting thousands of water meters on individual apartments would be exorbitant, operators say, so instead, residents pay a monthly flat rate for water.

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