It's About the Water, Stupid

OK..so not such an original quote.... After all, didn't it appear in a Presidential Debate in the USA some years ago, in almost those words?

When most people think about BC, I don't imagine that controversies about water come to mind right away. BC likely stimulates images of large lakes, rivers, waterfalls.... Lots of water. Yet the interesting truth is that issues about water are extremely common and divisive, right across the province.

Our little community (subdivision, actually), owns and operates it's own water system for about 25 residences. Volunteers from the community maintain the system. Although new drinking water regulations are really another issue, it's worth pointing out that our system is advanced enough that we actually meet those new regulations, and have done for several years now.

About 2+ years ago, we embarked on a project to install water meters at every residential connection. There were several objectives, but the most important, I suppose, was to move to a system where every water user pays for the water they use. The flat rate system that the water meters helped replace simply forces people with lower water use to subsidize homes with higher water use. You want a dumb example? Imagine being able to use as much electricity as you wanted for, let's say, $200/year. Flat rate. No incentive to be careful with how much electricity you used. One anticipated result of this system is that electricity use would increase and the power utility would have to increase capacity. This increased capacity would have to be paid for by an increase in rates. So, regardless of how careful you were with YOUR power use, you'd be subsidizing the power use of anyone not being as careful as yourself.

The good news is that most of the residents in our subdivision "get it". They understand that water is a utility and that, like any other utility, you should pay for what you use. The bad news is that we are STILL getting (some) arguments advocating going back to the old flat rate system. I've ranted about this in an earlier post and I'm still frustrated by the complete lack of logic and muddle-headed thinking that seems to be at the back of these tired old arguments. I guess that still, even in this day and age, some people still don't see clean, safe drinking water as a valuable resource that should cost something.