Water going down the drain March 1, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Environment, London , trackbackMy annual water bill is about £220. That is nearly as much as my electricity and gas combined. The difference is that while I try quite hard to conserve all three, my gas and electricity is metered but my water is not.
In Dover and Kent, the water company has just got permission to make water meters compulsory because of the the drought, which means that the water wasters will finally have to pay a fair charge for their profligacy. Nice socialist ideas of sharing these costs are, like the Camden Council Heating Pool, great in theory, but give no incentive to save a scarce resource.
If people need help, then surely it’s better to increase their benefits or working family tax credit, rather than subsidising their water and gas usage. That way, if they want to save water or gas and spend the money elsewhere, they can. Sometimes a capitalist approach to conservation is the easier one.
It also means that the water companies have a stronger incentive to do something about leaky pipes, as they can’t sell water they don’t deliver to a customer. In my area there are two places where the pipes seem to burst every 6 months or so suggesting that a more long term fix is needed
The last time I looked at it, getting a meter in a multi-flat building looked all too hard, but I’m going to try again. I am tired of subsidising people who can’t see that water is valuable.
Comments»
no comments yet - be the first?