Buy Your Neighbor a New Potty…
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… and perpetuate a vicious cycle, it seems. According to a recent AJC article, “residents and businesses cut water use by 17.2 percent last year, a decline of more than 5 billion gallons from 2007. As a result, revenue for Gwinnett’s Department of Water Resources fell $11 million, or 5.4 percent.”
A portion of the revenue, about $300,000, was lost in rebates to residents who replaced older toilets with newer, low-flow models. According to the same AJC article, “[t]he loss would have been greater — as much as $35 million — had the agency not improved collection rates, adjusted fees and implemented a summer surcharge….”
In addition, the article notes, last year the county imposed an 8.4 percent increase in the sewer portion of your bill on top of an annual, automatic five percent rate increase for water.
Now the county proposes to use the rate hike revenue (at least, another $300K) to buy more old toilets, arguably conserving another nine million gallons.
That’s nine million gallons of additional lost revenue to the county which, as we have already experienced, produces higher water bills for us all. Not only are we subsidizing our neighbor’s water bill by helping him cut his own costs, but we aren’t even receiving the benefit of our conservation efforts!
In the “real world” (meaning non-government), when I use less of something that must be purchased, my total cost is less. And when we, as a group, use less of a particular commodity the price of that commodity drops. For example, in the face of higher gas prices last fall Americans cut back drastically on their consumption and prices dropped like a rock.
It is “the law of supply and demand,” a concept that doesn’t seem to apply when government is involved. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?
Some might say that if a higher water bill is the price that we must pay to “save the planet,” then so be it. What do you say? Let me hear from you in the comments.
Toilet rebates worth drain on revenue, counties say | ajc.com
