INC NEWS - Hidden Fees

[RW Pickle]

With our crunch on water these days, and so much talk about use of it, I
decided to look at my water bill just to see how we do over here. It's not
something I usually care to look at very much since it seems to be within
$20-30 every time it comes.

Over the last billing period, I used about $.50 (fifty cents) of water a
day which I thought was a pretty good deal. But what struck me as strange
when I looked over the bill were all the other charges that I pay for as
well on this billing. It seems to cost me twice as much to get rid of the
water I use. Aren't we just recycling this water anyway? It goes to the
treatment plant and then is discharged back into our rivers and lakes.
Then we get to buy it all over again. if we started recycling some of this
"gray water" like the Governor has suggested, we'll still be paying for
the treatment of it (since sewage is charged at a rate per amount of water
used).

And just what is all this conservation going to end up doing to budgets of
departments that depend on the revenue? They are able to get these
millions of dollars through bonds without much effort because they are
revenue based bonds. What happens when they're not making the money they
expect to repay these bonds? And where does that extra money come from?
Does that mean the price of water will go up because we are using less
(thereby cutting into their water resource budget) just to cover costs?
Like so many other things in this country, our system of "use more, pay
less" is screwed up. There is no reward for those who would conserve
(except smaller bills for them). But if the price goes up because people
use less, how can that be right? programs in other countries reward
citizens for using less by charging them less. And once you reach a
certain threshold, the price starts to climb rapidly. So there is a larger
incentive to conserve; not just water (like in this case), but electricity
as well.

I'd be curious to know how much water (in dollars per day since that's
easy to see from the bill and requires no extra calculations other than
dividing by 60 days) others use. Maybe what I use is a lot and I just do
not know...

RWP
27 Beverly