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Re: City committee approves water and sewer rate changes, April 14, 201
If city staff get their way, the way we will be charged for water sends the wrong message: conserve and you get hosed. If you blatantly waste water, hallelujah, your water rates may actually decrease. Thankfully, most Ottawa councillors seem to recognize the unfairness of such a system.
Canadians have never paid the true cost of water, so I support the idea of a base rate charge to pay for water infrastructure. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has pegged Canada’s water-wastewater-stormwater infrastructure deficit at $31 billion, with an additional $56 billion required to build new water infrastructure. Since we all need water to survive, we collectively need to pay for it.
Unfortunately, many Canadians think we have an unlimited supply of “blue gold.” Take a stroll through any Ottawa neighbourhood on a sunny summer day and you’ll see people watering their lawns in the height of the noon-day sun or breaking out the hose, instead of the broom, to clean their driveway.
The obvious solution is to charge staggered rates, as many electric utilities do. For example, in Ottawa, those who use less than 1,000 kWh per month of electricity are charged one rate and any electrical use above that is charged at a higher rate. This is straightforward market incentive: if you use less, you pay less.
The same could be done for water. Natural Resources Canada estimates that the average Canadian uses roughly 340 litres of water per day. This is a ridiculously high amount.
But for argument sake, let’s say the City of Ottawa based water use rates on that average for a four-person household. Anything above 1,360 litres per day (340 × 4) would be charged at a much higher rate to encourage people to conserve water.
To provide some perspective, my two-person household uses, on average, less than 70 litres of water per day. My last water bill, based on actual use, not estimated, came in at just over $15 for a two-month period.
If councillors approve city staff’s plan to raise water rates across the board, without financially penalizing those who waste this resource, my conservation efforts will simply go down the drain.
Sharon Boddy, Ottawa
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