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A huge reason companies use so much water is that it's artificially cheap. Companies typically pay 10% or less of the cost per gallon a resident does in their h
by rurp 4y ago
A huge reason companies use so much water is that it's artificially cheap. Companies typically pay 10% or less of the cost per gallon a resident does in their home.
- lazide 4y agoUsually because the grade and location of the water is not suitable for residential use.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoFarmers don't need drinking-safe water but that doesn't justify the price difference. There should be three grades of water: 1) Untreated. 2) Salty (desalinated, but not to full freshwater standards), used for toilets, showers and the like. 3) Potable. What you're doing with the water should have no bearing on the price and the price difference should only reflect the additional cost of going from #1 or #2 to #3. You also pay a separate charge for delivering water to your place, this is omitted if you're getting it from a well and don't need delivery. The base rates are standardized across a watershed (in this case, every place served by the Colorado river), the delivery charge is based on the cost to provide it to you. (Thus the cabins on the other side of the mountain here that lost their water in a wildfire--when the trees burned it not only damaged the pipe but caused land slippage that destroyed said pipe--pay a whopping delivery charge, but otherwise the same price per cubic foot we do.)
- lazide 4y agoWhy should someone pay a ‘Colorado watershed price’ for a gallon of water they pump from their own well on their own land, if that aquifer doesn’t meaningfully participate in that watershed, and isn’t even drawn on by other people? Most of Central California for instance isn’t in a watershed that connects to the Colorado in any way.