foxfire wrote :
Quote:That only works in a free market without government interference, however. As a result of a prolonged drought in our area (now in its second decade), awhile back the citizens were asked to go the second and third mile to conserve water. We obediently complied.
After awhile we were advised that our water rates would be increased because revenues at the water department had been so much reduced.
The same thing happened with natural gas this past winter. High prices caused many of us to switch to more energy efficient furnaces, install better weather stripping, etc. to conserve energy. The monopolized gas company reported such poor earnings that it was necessary to raise our rates for gas too.
Maybe I'm really getting old, but isn't it reasonable to interpret that as a disincentive to conserve anything?
1) water rates :
you are esentially paying for the fixed costs/assets of the watersupply system .
the variable costs pay for the energy to run the pumps - and even that cost would hardly be reduced by pumping less water - assuming that the cost of energy does not go up and that's not very likely , is it ?
labur costs would not be reduced by pumping less water and long-term labour costs are going up too .
so you are talking about cost recovery here .
the costs might have increased substantially if the water utility would have had to drill more wells , build additional pumping facilities and build more treatment plants .
what you were essentially doing is preserving some of the fresh-water supply - and that is good , is it not ?
i can't see how the utility (private or not) could have operated with lower total revenue , but perhaps i'm missing something somewhere .
2) gas rates :
the utility would generally charge the gas spotprice plus the distribution
cost .
the spotprice for gas has been going up for some time
in addition you are paying - just like for the water - the cost of the distribution system and cost of pumping and labour costs .
i have difficulty understanding why you think your bill should have remained static or were you perhaps even expecting a lower bill ? :wink:
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unless you can provide your own water and gas directly in some less expensive way - such as drilling your own wells - you will hardly see a drop in the bill from your utility .
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there are some homeowners in ontario that by extensive modification to their houses are actually able to get paid by the utility for feeding electrical energy back into the system .
to encourage users to drastically reduce their use of energy from the net and also to feed back into the net , ontario hydro is paying those homeowners well above the spotprice for electricity being fed back into the system .
considering the cost of the modifications , i doubt that older houses could ever benefit from such "feedbacks' , but houses now being built give the owner the option to have their houses designed to make "feedback" a viable option (as long as the feedback electricity is bought back at a premium) .
looking at our own total utility bill for electricity , water and sewage disposal it costs us a little less than $7 a day - that looks like quite a bargain to me .
we still have "old-fashioned" oilheating so we have to add about $3 a day for fuel oil to that for a total of about $10 a day year-round - still not bad imo - considering that it keeps us warm at minus 20-25 C and cool at plus 28-30 C , keeps the lights burning , gives us fresh water and disposes of the sewage .
hbg
