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!
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.