Beginning Aug. 1, the Cumming Utilities Department will extend its high-efficiency toilet rebate program to include multi-family customers, such as apartment, condominium and townhome communities.

“We have offered our high-efficiency toilet rebate program to individual homeowners for several years now,” said Jon Heard, director of the department. “We believe that offering this rebate to larger communities will be a great benefit to our entire service area, which includes about one-third of Forsyth County.”

When property owners or managers switch out those less efficient toilets for new Environmental Protection Agency WaterSense toilets – those that use 1.28 gallons or less per flush – and certain other criteria are met, they can qualify to receive a $100 rebate per toilet.

The department was recently recognized by the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District for its efforts in the toilet rebate program. Since beginning the program for individual homeowners in 2010, the City of Cumming has provided more than $15,000 in rebates, which are applied to customers’ utility bills.

The new, multi-family residence program will apply to communities constructed in 1993 or earlier. Property owners or managers will need to first agree to a pre-installation toilet inspection by the City of Cumming to verify that toilets currently utilized at the property use more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush.

“We hope this will be a good incentive for property owners of some of our older multi-family residences to upgrade to more environmentally-friendly toilets,” Heard added. “Any time we can help our customers change to products that use less water, we’re happy to do so since lower water usage benefits everyone.”

The program rebate amount will be capped at 50 toilets per service address per calendar year. Rebates will be applied to the water account(s) for the property.

More information about the new multi-family toilet rebate program will be available after Aug. 1 on the department’s website, www.cummingutilities.com. For more information about the program can also contact Barbara Pitts, Utilities Billing Manager, at (770) 781-2020 or barbara@cityofcumming.net.

The toilet rebate program is one of several tools in place at the City of Cumming Utilities Department to help customers lower their monthly service bills. Others include “Do-It-Yourself Household Water Assessments,” informational brochures covering a variety of water and sewer topics, and a limited number of kits that can be used to convert higher-flow shower heads and faucets to lower-flow. All of these tools can be picked up any time between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday-Friday at Cumming City Hall in the Utilities Department.

Source: City of Cumming