Her water provider – the city of San Diego – already charges one of the highest rates among major utilities in the nation, a recent survey shows.
Water usage per household has declined.
Who is wasting the water?
Posted on 04/23/2009 5:53:32 PM PDT by UltraConservative
I never tried to bring my usage down,was always frugal.
1000sqft home,1 bathroom,no TV,1 computer,1 radio....
Jeez what next do i have to give up?
Thank god my guns don’t use water i would be really fuc**d
So, now you're saying you lied. You are not paying a rate that with your usage comes to $4.90/month - $14.70/quarter? If that is not what you're paying, why did you say it is?
“You don't seem to know squat about what is going on out here.”
I have relatives (my seven brothers and sisters and their children, and their children's spouses, and their in-laws) and friends, spread out across S. Cal, from Solano Beach to Sanata Barabara, including many inland. I visit there at least every other month. I know what I see, what I read, what they say and what they complain about, including the water conditions. I know that no matter what has changed in the technology, people's habits in southern California have not changed.
You can spew your class warfare business all you want, it won't provide any great degree of additional water savings, nor will any reductions at a few rich people's homes.
To get enough savings to make any difference, to make any real difference in total water usage, water usage rates and plans have to affect the broadest body of users; to have the scale to make a difference.
If the rates are not making a difference, they are too low; no matter who is paying them.
Aside from not knowing what the water rates are you also don't seem to know that laws governing the manufactured products have changed.
Since I have been doing this for much of 33 years and some of your relatives live in the very area that I have been servicing for a large part of that 33 years there is a real chance that I know and have been inside their very homes.
“Aside from not knowing what the water rates are”
I DO KNOW what your effective monthly quarterly water rate is, you told me, and if it is any guide to others in your area, it is too low.
“Since I have been doing this for much of 33 years and some of your relatives live in the very area that I have been servicing for a large part of that 33 years there is a real chance that I know and have been inside their very homes.”
Regardless, the wasteful habits of water users have not changed. No matter how much the technology is “saving”, changes in their habits can still produce savings.
Water usage per household has declined.
Who is wasting the water?
First: the usage data is more than a decade old.
Second: although the report you sited;
found at either:
http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Water-Demand-Management-Planning/dp/007050301X#reader
or
is also ten years old,
the relavent point is their conclusions, on which water district changes in rates and policies changed water usage behavior,
and those conclusions drew on the data that suggested “tiered” (progressive) rates, making bigger users pay progressively more (which is what I have said all along - go back to my earliest posts), provided better results.
It is still “supply and demand” based, with those generating greater demand paying more for that greater demand.
It is not stationing the water-police at Malibu mansions.
They support my claims that water usage has changed since that period of “the 50 and 60s” that you laughingly claimed for your experience on So. Cal. initially.
They definitely support my claim that huge gains can be made by restraining the waste at the top that I have to personally witness since they are among my customers. What did it say the top 10% used 27% of the water, that the top 27% used almost half the water?
Gee, what have I been trying to tell you, the reaction of many of my rich customers during these decades of water price increases has been for them to spend more to increase their consumption of water by installing higher consumption items. But you are a guy in New Jersey so you know a lot about what goes on in people’s homes here.
And it made a fool of you and your repeated goofiness about knowing the water rates here because of how much I pay, as the chart shows San Diego has among the highest residential water rates in the country.
You just don’t have anything to offer except that you don’t want the largest water wasters annoyed, when you simply ignore my decades of experience in this area and the fact that more than anyone I actually witness the way people here use their water in their homes, it shows your stubbornness.
Tell me what your relatives addresses are in this area and I will tell you if I have been to their home or have only been in their neighborhood. I may even donate a free $150.00 service call for me to visit their home and verify your unlikely claims.
“They definitely support my claim that huge gains can be made by restraining the waste at the top that I have to personally witness since they are among my customers. What did it say the top 10% used 27% of the water, that the top 27% used almost half the water?”
And, as you conveniently ignore, their analysis showed “tiered” (progressive) rates, as I proposed, had the best result (not class-based rationing) in changing water usage habits and overall water usage results. In other words, contrary to your opinion, higher water rates on higher-quantity users DOES alter THEIR usage, in spite of their supposed greater ability to pay those rates.
Sorry, but my friends and relatives have their own contractors and advisers and I do not presume to interfere with their choices. They are smart people and do not need my help.
“And it made a fool of you and your repeated goofiness about knowing the water rates here because of how much I pay,”
Sorry, oh foolish one, but I never presumed to know specific rates, beyond what rate information YOU provided.
My specific points were:
(1) that my specific information on rates was the specific information YOU provided - YOUR RATES ($14.70/qtr),
and
(2) that if such was the rates of others as well, that they are too low in my opinion, regardless of usage. And, certainly judging just by the additional rate data you added - even though it’s ten years old, from some other S. Cal districts, most anyone would agree.
Amazing, I never said such a thing, I told you what my personal water bill averaged per month when I looked at three bills and that did not include the sewer which runs about $21.00 a month for me.
Over and over I tried to get you to explain how you could look at my personal usage and extrapolate what the water rate is here, for all I know my neighbor spends $200.00 a month on water. You never did explain how you could not see that, but you kept posting your mistake over and over.
Typical BS answer from you, and as someone knowledgeable in this area I have mentioned and revealed an area of water waste that is outside the knowledge of the average taxpayer and voter, while the average people are bending over backwards to pave over their grass and use low flow shower heads the wealthy are actually paying to have plumbers install multiple shower heads and over sized water systems.
The media and the politicians are protecting those people, here is a reminder of the lengths they will go to.
That reminds me, during one drought in the 90s our wealthy mayor who of course was trumpeting all of the crisis management threats and warnings and declarations (and fines)was discovered to have two water meters on her property that she was using to conceal her actual usage from public opinion.
Put me in touch with those local relatives that you think are still using the same amount of water in their homes that they were in the 50s and 60s I can help them, Of course what you claim isn't true anyway. I know because I either service some of your relatives or at least some of their neighbors.
When a quarter of the people are using half of the water, and 10% are using a quarter of the water after years of water conservation and water conserving products installed into homes then it means that the low hanging fruit is mostly picked and it is time to start looking more closely at those that aren't playing the game.
“Over and over I tried to get you to explain how you could look at my personal usage and extrapolate what the water rate is here,”
You made it clear that the $4.90/mo was only for your water. Sewage charges were never brought up by me, and never an issue. Another one of your straw men.
I never “extrapolated” anything.
I said “IF” people all around you were paying the low rate you were paying - if it was an example of rates charged, it was too low in my opinion. Since you provided the data, not me, I did not “extrapolate” anything. I simply used it as an example based on the only data you provided.
In spite of all your history and current experience, YOU did not have data, disputing that IF, so you went out, to the net and found a report to provide some data; a report which does indicate much higher rates in some areas, though that data is ten years old. Which, if rates have changed in those reported areas in the last ten-eleven years - one can only imagine the rates have increased - and your rate, your $4.90/month for water alone without sewage included would seem awfully low, by comparison. That was not an “extrapolation”. That was a simple comparison between YOUR rate data that you provided, and the new (ten year old) rate data you added from the report you found.
For one who claims to be so on top of this subject, one would expect you to have CURRENT rate data from all over S. Cal (which you either don’t, or simply failed to produce - instead of even making your own rate as an example). I imagine if you now go out and seek to find that data, you will again find, by comparison, YOUR $4.90 rate is low.
That isn’t the “rate” here, that represents my usage only, why is that impossible for you to get through your head. Your extrapolation, especially in view of the discussion we were having was silly as was revealed when I pointed out that San Diego water rates are among the very highest in the nation and they are going up in two months.
If you tell me what your electric bill was last month or what your water bill was, it doesn’t tell me what the water or electric rate is for your area.
My ten year old data is excellent, is not outdated, and it supports my decades of personal observance and the very point that I have made on this thread and it fits my companies experience before ten years ago and in the ten years since.
You have some hang up about Californians preventing water waste here at a time when we are short of water, I am baffled at what is driving your obsession with this Mr. New Jersey.
Which is more distraction and diversion, which, like changing the argument, is all you know how to do.
1. Whether before you provided any other data, than your monthly water bill, or after - in the case of San Diego, or anywhere else, the monthly "bill" amount you provided DOES imply, represent in what it does tell us, a "RATE";
2. even though the bill amount is NOT, by itself THE rate;
3. YET, in as much as "water rates" are applied, in most cases, beginning as a certain $amount for UP-TO-a-certain-cubic-ft-level of usage (like the first X cubic feet), the bill amount implies a rate by which that UP TO minimum amount, is billed, if nothing else; because the bill could not be less than the initial minimum rate.
4. In that manner, your bill DOES represent a "bill" rate - the application of a "water" rate to a certain minimum water usage (or more). [the tables in the very report you provided shows how these rates work in this manner]. For you to have a monthly charge of only $4.90/month, the minimum charge for the UP-TO-lowest-cubic/ft-rate, CANNOT be HIGHER than $4.90/month, or you would be paying more, but you're not. $4.90/month, for the minimum usage alone DOES represent a low rate COMPARED TO ALL THE OTHER DATA YOU PRESENTED - BESIDES YOUR MONTHLY AMOUNT, from which, by comparison, no monthly bill-rate amount could come to $4.90. That comparison has nothing to do with your usage, whatever it is, but it is a fair comparison between YOUR bill (and the rates it is derived from) and the lowest minimum rates from ALL the other data you provided.
5. That is the simple point - in comparing YOUR monthly bill with what is possible to obtain for a monthly bill, from all the other rate data you provided, it is that data, not my guess, that suggests your bill is low - by comparison. That is the point. [now I assume you must be madly looking for other rate data somewhere that could make it possible to get a monthly bill as low as your $4.90]
"If you tell me what your electric bill was last month or what your water bill was, it doesn’t tell me what the water or electric rate is for your area."
Electric bills and water bills are billed in a similar manner; there may be a "basic" service charge, or other "service charges", in addition to charges for usage. But, water bills (most everyone I know of) begin with a rate for the service, up to a certain minimum cu/ft of usage, whether or not that minimum cu/ft is used. [just as the tables in the book that you quoted reported] Therefore, a water bill, unlike an electric bill, has a closer relationship to at least the minimum water-rate, without knowing the total usage, than does the electric bill without knowing total electric usage; because that minimum water rate is included in the final bill total and it cannot be higher than the final bill total. So, $4.90/monthly, given how water bills work, implies it comes from a low minimum rate, when compared to the lowest minimum rates in all other rates that you provided. That's not an "extrapolation", it's simply a comparison with what is possible from the alternate rates you provided and your bill.
"My ten year old data is excellent, is not outdated"
That's really rich - "ten year old data" is not "outdated".
"You have some hang up about Californians preventing water waste here at a time when we are short of water, I am baffled at what is driving your obsession with this Mr. New Jersey."
???My obsession???
Read the very report you sited. It concludes, that "tiered" pricing (progressive rates) IS what the subject districts did to change water usage, and THAT was just as I offered , on my second post in this thread.
"And, making it more expensive for those who consume more WILL convince people to voluntarily shut off or reduce unessential water usage, out of self-interest to obtain a lower water bill.
And yes, the best rates would even be “progressive”, charging “a” for “x” cubic feet, “b” for every “y” cubic feet between “x” and “z” and “c” for every “y” cubic feet above “z” (letting local districts fill in the rates and numbers for a,b,c and x,y,z, as their supply and demand needs dictate).<./i>
The very report you cited details how tiered prices and supply and demand data and principles worked. Not water police.
All that nonsense when in fact that nonsense is what led you to make such a bizarre and idiotic mistake which was proven when I showed the water rate chart.
My point was to stop excess usage of water in a drought not to simply charge more for it as though it were still available.
That ten year old data is not outdated whereas your laughable attempt to claim personal knowledge because of living out here 45 years ago before anyone had even heard of “low flow” is definitely “outdated”.
Yes, you are obsessed with this, on a thread about water rates going up to deal with a water shortage, you posted that the “honest” way to tackle this would be to raise the water rates.
Using my experience over 33 years of working in this area and seeing the drought measures come and go and the rates go up and up and because of my work seeing the flaw in that limited approach, I posted what we need to do to take a big bite out of this. That seems to have triggered some class conscious response in you and you have been obsessed with posting to me ever since.
It is funny that you claim that years ago the tiered pricing worked ,yet here we are and I have been doing a slow burn for many years as I watched the wealthy ignore all pressure to reduce water usage in their homes, those wealthy wasters and the middle class savers hire me for their water work and repairs and fixture replacement and after market installs, I know how they live, and what their plumbing consists of, I have even lost wealthy customers because of my efforts to get them to see reason when coming up with their water demands.
Water rates are going through the roof for everyone, tier pricing is already there, yet in this current drought you want to obsess with my additional insight into the problem by pretending that you know things that you don’t.
I get it, you want to raise water prices which So. Cal has been doing for decades, San Diego just passed another 35% increase, repeating it over and over isn’t teaching anyone anything, but I do know that many people here did not know that some of their wealthier neighbors take their morning shower in a shower that looks like a gym shower with four or six separate shower heads that are feet from each other that aren’t even, or can’t even be pointed at the person that lives and showers there alone.
“Water rates are going through the roof for everyone,”
Not everyone, because according to the data YOU provided, certainly NOT for you. I would guess that your low water bill, and the rates it is based on is not unique.
Yes, these are “drought” conditions, but the ONLY report, the only study you presented (exclusive of your anecdotal knowledge) CONCLUDED, as I did, that tiered/progressive rates have worked. And, even in these extraordinary times, there is no study that says they will not continue to work, if refined for today’s circumstances. But, go ahead, support the Nazi water police ideas. See where that gets you.
God, you are an idiot. I didn't supply you with data, I told you my monthly bill based on almost no usage, it isn't a RATE, then I showed you that this area has almost the highest water rates in the country, and then I pointed out that they are going up 35%.
My water bill will be what ever it is, if it increases a hundred percent then so be it, I am an expert in my personal water conservation, I do this for a living and I clearly have a personal interest in this, my personal water usage will be less than anyone that you have or will ever know.
I can't believe that you are still extrapolating this areas water rate by my personal water use. Every one's rate here is the same, but not every one's bill, get it?
As far as tiered rates working, what do you think this thread is about, we still have the problem!, Besides it ignores my expert opinion that the rich are wasting vast amounts of water and that the general public and the voters are not aware of it.
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