FOX 40 in Sacramento has updated the latest actions of the “water vigilante” of East Sacramento, who roams through East Sacramento at night checking for houses running water wastefully, then retaliates.
Stephanie Matulich, whose house was targeted on one of her designated watering nights, said, “The water main is situated at the front of my house, hidden by some bushes, but it’s off. That orange knob right there. He decided to just turn off my water.”
She explained how her system works, saying, “So I hit enter, and then at that point it starts the watering. Then, after twenty minutes it just shuts off automatically.”
The night her water was turned off, she set the watering system to start at midnight. “I got up at about five in the morning and went to use the restroom, and found that the toilet wouldn’t flush.” She went outside and found that someone had turned off the water supply to her house.
Matulich said, “Somebody had the nerve to walk onto my property and turn my water off. I mean, you don’t know who lives here, you don’t know if it’s an elderly person or somebody who needs water to maintain medical equipment, and it scares me that they probably walked all around my property, looking for where the water main was.”
Matulich’s house is in the same neighborhood as a water fountain that was recently vandalized, even though it uses recirculated water. The fountain was repeatedly toppled despite the best efforts of the owner of the house where it was located. “So I’d have to set it back up, level it, reconnect it, and then they came back, and they did it again,” said Kathy Haberman, who eventually removed the fountain. She added, “They could have knocked on the door and said, ‘Look, it’s really bothering me.’ They didn’t. They just decided they should knock it over.”
Matulich concluded, “Maybe if you felt I was doing something wrong, either knock on my door and say something’s going on, or leave a note.”