We have lived here for the last 10 years. We always pay our water bill. Occasionally, we’ll forget and receive a final notice for our water bill which we will promptly pay.
Tonight at 8 pm, a city police officer banged on our door with a blinding flashlight in hand. Made me verify my identification and then handed me my water bill (the due date being a week from now)
What the hell!
That actually sounds like a great way to get people wasting a lot of water. Are you somewhere wet?
Yes, I do live in a place that has lots of fresh water, we do use a lot, and yes, if people were paying for the amount of water they use, they would waste less
However, do you know who is using even more water than citizens? Corporations. And they pay even less.
In one region alone, 18 businesses are using more than 75 000 litres *every day", representing billions of litres of water in a year, and combined, they paid $192 000 CAD in 2019.
Before making citizens pay for every drop of water they use, and accusing them of “wasting” water, I’d first turn my attention to corporations taking our resource for peanuts.
Water is a right, not a commodity.
I mean, it’s both.
Water is so cheap though.
As in, if you use a lot of power you’ll notice your bill is expensive.
When you use a lot of water it costs a few dollars.
In Australia tap water is (generally) a government service. We pay a set annual fee for the connection, and then a rate per kL. That rate is $2 AUD per kL for the first 150 kL.
Average full time wage is about $1,000 AUD per week after taxes.
Incidentally our water meter is broken and only records a tiny portion of our actual water usage, but our family of 4 probably uses 500L a day, 15kL a month.
If we were to double our usage that’s $30 a month so it’s just not really a noticable cost.
Hmm, looks like it’s 5CAD/m3 here, and another 2CAD for sewerage. There’s a hint on the bill that it might get higher if you’re a big consumer, but I don’t actually know. (1kL = 1m3)
You’re right, it’s not huge, but if you own a swimming pool I imagine it can still add up. My friend who’s a seasoned municipal worker says it’s way lower than what it should be, too, although I can’t confirm that’s a numerically informed position.
The provisioning of free landfilling and free roads and parking definitely has had unfortunate side-effects, at least.
Oh, yeah. Filling a pool would get pricey. We have a sliding scale so pool-havers would pay more to fill a pool.
I think there’s an argument to be made to increase the cost just to reduce consumption - the same for power and gas.
I’m not a climate scientist but the predictions for water scarcity in the future are pretty scary. I think that might be more for agricultural uses than drinking water specifically, but still.