Editor:
One question is about technology: Why is it that, in an era when electronics can seemingly do almost everything, including sending a camera through people’s arteries to find potential problems, we need to use water meters to identify long collections of pipe where there are one or more leaks, and then dig along the pipes, often through road pavements, until a leak is located?
The other is about consumer economics: why charge all homes the same? It has been argued here that metering and charging the same per volume going into a home leads to significant conservation only in the short run, six months or a year, if at all. Supply-demand theory supports that to the extent that water is, like air and food, a human necessity. But water in our society is a mixed good: we need some to survive, but beyond drinking, cooking and hygiene, it is a luxury good. Nobody “needs” two homes, so nobody needs the sprinkler systems that keep the lawns green around second homes on the Sunshine Coast, likewise hot tubs and private pools.
Another economic consideration is the fact that what we have is at its most basic level a storage capacity problem. If we could average it out year-round, we have more than enough water for all foreseeable residential users for the rest of this century. There are a variety of reasons why summer is our peak water usage time, while water needs are about the same year-round.
Charging users only for what they use in the summer months, while the draw on the existing storage is larger than the monthly anticipated precipitation, would be a much more efficient economic incentive to conserve, and it would spread the costs in proportion to our individual contributions to the collective requirement to increase storage capacity. It would also be more equitable if those whose consumption is truly at a subsistence level were charged nothing toward the added capacity. And it would suitably reward those who figure out ways to store enough in early spring to water their tomatoes, lettuce and potatoes through the summer. Furthermore, the charges could be adjusted year by year as we learn from local experience about the conservation effect of our local price and as climate or other changes may occur.
Efficiency and equity, a win-win solution.
Henry Hightower, Sechelt
