24 May 2008

When saving water is just not worth the effort

| spoonbill
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Having just received my water bill from ACTEWAGL I was very disappointed to see that despite my usage being down 33kl over the same period last year, my total bill has increased by $70. This year we put no water on our garden except for grey water – water from baths, showers and laundry was captured for this purpose; we installed a rainwater tank for native plants and did everything possible to save this precious resource. The government has added a myriad of taxes and charges (water abstraction charge, ACT Govt utilities sewer network tax and ACT Govt utilities water network tax) as well as substantially increasing the cost of water for usage over 100kl per annum.

From the website: Over a 12–month period, water usage is charged at the following rates:
the first 100kL water used per year is charged at $0.775 per kL
usage between 100kL and 300kL per year is charged at $1.67 per kL
usage in excess of 300kL per year is charged at $2.57 per kL

This is an grossly unfair method of charging for water as it does not usage does not take into account the number of people in a household. So, in my humble opinion, the moral of the story is that is is just not worth the effort of lugging buckets around the garden unless you can keep consumption under 100kl.

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Sorry magella I should be a little more political correct. The ones I found were being cared for in the family home although the “group” homes were interesting. They were the ones with a sprinkler service and unmarked buildings. Not even the local fire brigade or fire prevention part of the council was aware of where all these homes were located due to privacy requirements. A lot more out there than you realise. They used large volumes of water.
One major hospital in Melbourne was installing water meters on every floor to enable water management to occur.

(WARNING: slightly off topic rant)

smokey4 said :

I not long ago worked at the pointy end of water charging. Heaviest water users were households with teanage girls or incontinent retards. Heavy charging penalises those with the incontinent retards that have washing machines going 24X7.

“Incontinent retards” – That terminology is delightful. And of course they ALL wear cloth nappies. Or no nappies at all and are just soiling themselves constantly. The incontinent retards that you so kindly refer to (people with disabilities is the recognised acceptable term, it’s not about political correctness -it’s about DIGNITY) for the most part live in government run or subsidised group houses for people with disabilities, and I’m guessing the cost of water is factored into the running of such houses. And yes, I’m sure that households where someone who happens to be incontinent would also use more water (babies, small children and elderly people can also be incontinent – “retards” don’t own the monopoly). But my whinge isn’t about water, I just found your terminology incredibly offensive.

Rant over.

Woody Mann-Caruso10:03 pm 27 May 08

it would require a lot less effort to convert to potable water than your and my urine – a LOT less.

How much less? How long would the lakes last at current consumption rates?

Isn’t it crazy, we’re all trying to deal with massive shortages of essential things, and the government is telling people to increase the population. At what point will the link start to sink in?

Only one dam WMC, only one dam. My eyes tell me a different story when I look at LBG, lake belconen, lake gungahlin, lake tuggeranong etc. Lest we forget we are talking about the same dam that his highness decided to allow to run for ‘environmental flows’ a wee while back.

While that water is not directly potable (unless you are particularly strong stomached), it would require a lot less effort to convert to potable water than your and my urine – a LOT less.

So, in context, yes current dam levels at 46% and falling fast is a fine and dandy thing.

The full motive card of Jon Stanhope pty ltd hasn’t been drawn yet.

Woody Mann-Caruso6:14 pm 27 May 08

So you’re saying having a current dam levels at 46% and falling fast is a fine and dandy thing, Maelinar? Water water everywhere, I think I’ll wash the car?

trial water purification plant = we are going to make you drink your poo and wee, even if you don’t want to. Make no other assumptions than the above, for that is their true intent.

BTW, if anybody in ACT Government is reading this (and I know you are) – I challenge you to drive ANYWHERE in the ACT and be more than 20 mins away from a source of water bigger than 1GL.

The reality is, if there were any more water in the ACT, I would be an extremely busy SES volunteer, because I would be doing flood damage mitigation.

Put those apples in your ‘didn’t fall in the catchment’ barrel.

51modelBloke1:58 pm 27 May 08

The following comment is a little off base, but do you know what I find is most offensive? I’m referring of course to the topical Canberra data city cum powerstation. Now, I personally don’t have a problem with the issue, in fact I agree there will be huge benefits for all. What I do find offensive is that ACTEWAGL have anything to do with it. We are already paying some of the highest prices for water/electricity/gas, just wait till the creative accountants start to offset some of the costs of data city agains’t our utilities. That’s my rant for today.

Grumpy Smurf1:15 pm 27 May 08

Just my two cents worth… why do i pay a sewage supply charge – i don’t want the sewerage, I want them to take it away!!!

I understand the point of making water a $1 dearer per kL once you go over a certain usage level, but only if they could reduce the extra taxes and charges. Alternatively, have an option for larger households to access the cheaper rate up to a higher level of usage (as they do in the UK). But to have all these extra taxes and charges, AND to charge a $1 a kL extra once you go over your allotted amount is a bit rich… Isn’t the government trying to encourage us to have more kids??… how about instead of a baby bonus, a water bonus, so you can afford to wash and clean up after the little brats??

What’s this Cr*p I’ve heard about a “trial water purification plant”??? Get real.. what a waste of money..

@hax – taking one thing out of the equation is what put us in so much trouble in the snowy. You need to keep the H intact for it to work – albeit you could use it before you return it, but thats another story.

In SA they are doing great things with thermal wells – a quick nutshell summary is a hole all the way through the earths crust to magma, produces steam, how high do you want your water ? (and they are generating power from the lift of steam as a byproduct).

aidan said :

Water is heavy. Pumping it about takes alot of energy and costs alot of money.

If only it wasn’t heavy. Like gas.
Instead of desalinzation per say, use electrolysis – then pump the hydrogen and oxygen separetly, and then back into water (mostly) – I’m sure we could find uses for the hydrogen too 😉

As for power, there is some interesting work on artificial photosynthesis, using a supramolecular complex to split water using sunlight. (ie manmade molecule does the work using sunlight, no “power” required).

Down South in Mexico all new flats I believe are now individually metered as part of the new building requirements. Problem is retro fitting old flats and leads to some interesting fitouts. For example Flats on Beaconsfield parade where the only way to read or replace the meter is to hang out of a 2nd level window. Been there done that. Or another one done on the cheap in Frankston by dodgy plumbers where only the half the plumbing goes through the individual meters. Many flats are fitted with hot water meters as well with centrally provided hot water.

what attention? in the ignore this one basket?

I thought that I would take this up with the Chief Minister who is also minister for water. I have received a reply back,

Thank you for your email to the Chief Minister, your correspondence is currently receiving attention.

Kind regards
Chantelle Lustri
Personal Assistant
Office of the Chief Minister

Ph: (02) 6205 0104
Fax: (02) 6205 0433

Woody Mann-Caruso3:15 pm 26 May 08

And Thumper could call the roos from the deep desert. OK, I’ll stop nerding out now.

Woody Mann-Caruso3:13 pm 26 May 08

I just had a vision of Canberra’s future – a vast, salinated desert, the people living underground in abandoned car parks, recyling their own waste with special suits, and riding to work on giant mutant Defence-experiment kangaroos, fighting with off-Territory invaders who want our most precious resource – GST distributions.

Woody Mann-Caruso3:07 pm 26 May 08

I think that’s pretty clever, actually (not the oil bit, obviously ;>). Why regulate and enforce when you can just chuck in some disincentives around the proxy indicators and let market forces take care of the rest? Or maybe not – transport and water seem to be surprisingly inelastic. If you’d asked people ten years ago what they’d do if petrol was $1.60+ and our dams were less than half full I reckon they’d say they’d walk to work and drink their own urine when they got there. I’m amazed at how we’ve more or less taken it in our stride, and wonder how long it can last.

It fits completely within the spectrum of this Governments action policies.

Too many cars on the road – sell off carparks
Too much water being used – raise its price

They are too busy wasting our money on tinpot ideas, speaking of which, I think Canberra needs an oil refinery here – the maths is all there, there’s no oil so they’d have to truck it in, there’s hardly any vehicle base, so they’d have to truck surplus finished product out.

Naturally, the price of fuel would remain the same anyway, if not higher than everywhere else because it would be fresher fuel. Do not underestimate the freshness quality characteristics of fuel.

captainwhorebags said :

peterh – Comrade Stanhope was asked about giving water tanks to every household. He stated that it was far more economical to expand dams as the same expenditure provided a lot more water. This is why the Cotter dam is getting an upgrade.

Of course, it’s also far easier to charge us for the water from the dam than water from a backyard tank. More money for ACTEW, more money for the government.

I had heard about a midnight raid by a couple of guys and a water tanker – down by LBG, which does not surprise me one bit. They were going to use the water for their gardens – easy to spot I suppose from the air, they are the ones with the green gardens – wait, it rained last night, no chance of catching them now….

If the chief minister wants to save water, perhaps he can give us a water tank after the dams don’t increase in volume. (needs to rain a lot to fill a dam) not so much to fill a tank.

hax,

Water is heavy. Pumping it about takes alot of energy and costs alot of money. Take a look at this post outlining the stupidity of a water pipeline from the Kimberlys to Perth (suggested by the Liberals in the last WA state election):

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2005/02/10/colins-canal-again/

Using green power to do desal is silly because we need to displace CO2 intensive coal fire power stations with green power, not use it to make desal plants.

And why can’t I decide where and when to use my allocation. Brisbane set targets for its residents on water use per person per day – which gave everyone something to aim for.

We could do that here and the more frugal users (front loaders, low flow shwer heads, dual flush toilets) would be free to use their “spare” allocation on whatever they wanted.

QBN Council was even offering free toilets for those that had the old style.

There seems to be too much of the stick and not enough of the carrot in the water debate….

captainwhorebags10:46 am 26 May 08

peterh – Comrade Stanhope was asked about giving water tanks to every household. He stated that it was far more economical to expand dams as the same expenditure provided a lot more water. This is why the Cotter dam is getting an upgrade.

Of course, it’s also far easier to charge us for the water from the dam than water from a backyard tank. More money for ACTEW, more money for the government.

That’s pretty rough, FC. I hpe they’re not still building complexes like that.

Thanks la mente.
I wonder if you can just get your own one individually metered. That would be good. but I doubt you can.
I’ll try and bring it up with the body corporate. I knew the few owners residing in the complex are keen for it.

la mente torbida9:43 am 26 May 08

@FC
At a cost of approx $800.00 each, it is possible to get individual meters installed and units then billed individually…only problem is getting it through the body corporate

What’s this “car washing” thing I keep hearing about? It rained last night, so my car got its wash. I’m on tank water here, and there ain’t no way I’m wasting it on a car. You just don’t know when it’s going to rain again.

Being on tank water sharpens your awareness of how precious drinking water is.

What really sucks is when you live in a townhouse, as I do.
There is one of me in my townhouse, and I am very careful with the water I use and anything I use on the garden or for plants in grey water. I also have very brief showers.
However,
The water bill is sent for the whole complex and is divided up between the dozen townhouses. Thing is, my water consumption is tiny compared to, say, the family of 5 adults that live next door (and also still think its okay to wash their car with the hose on cement…)

I not long ago worked at the pointy end of water charging. Heaviest water users were households with teanage girls or incontinent retards. Heavy charging penalises those with the incontinent retards that have washing machines going 24X7. Home owner “How come I use so much water?” My answer was “How many teenage girls in the household?” Used to get caught out sometimes by the odd retard situiation.

To save water use front load washing machines and good quality low flow shower heads.
Install a very large water tank for the garden.

I still think we should drain the lakes and use the water from them. This would allow the ACT Govt to clean them up, give the supermarkets back their trolleys and get rid of the numerous cars. Burley griffin fertiliser is still a good idea, you know…

if the ACT Government was serious about water saving, they would give every household a tank.

Being from Adelaide, I cannot remember being charged for the tank we used to have, maybe it was because we were drinking the rain water. Normal tap water varied in colour from brown to green, and was so cloudy you had to cut it with a spoon. really not nice. (insert mental picture here)

So – if we all had a tank, and water from the lakes pumped into it, we wouldn’t have such a problem. As I have stated before, if Jon can use the lake water for his arboretum, why can’t I have some free water too?

Salinity, yep we could drain some swamps.

wonderwoman80 said :

desalinization – you need sea water for that? and where do we get that from in Canberra?

Saline water isn’t the sole province of the sea. Try googling ‘salinity’.

Not exactly.

They are charging a Lot more if you use a bit more.

So if i went to the checkout with ten 1.00 drink cans I’d pay 10.00. but if I went there with 20 1.00 drink cans I’d have to pay 30.00.

I can see both points.

I dunno what the answer to water charging is though.

But ant, it’s just NOT FAIR :”-(.

Don’t forget – they’re w…… well, you know. The entitled ones.

I thought the supermarket analogy was quite good. They are charging for actual water used, full stop. High users pay for it. And as earlier pointed out, the smaller households still pay the same set base charges, no matter how little they use.

desalinization – you need sea water for that? and where do we get that from in Canberra?

Jervis bay?

Astrojax.. There is no logic to your supermarket analogy.

Woody Mann-Caruso6:30 pm 25 May 08

Scarce commodity expensive; news at 11.

sorry?

how is comparing a household with two people in it to one with four/six in it a logical way to argue the cost of water increases? do you suggest that you should be able to rock up to the woolies checkout and say, ‘aww but we’ve got three teenagers, but all live together, so can we just pay what that childless couple ahead of us did..?’

saving water saves you money – if you took the water you used from the bath from the tap, you’d have paid for it – but you didn’t. a saving. what’s the problem? water is a more and more scarce resource and unless we, as a community, value it as such we will squander it. deal with it, is my advice…

going green is not cheap; it’s imperative.

wonderwoman803:26 pm 25 May 08

desalinization – you need sea water for that? and where do we get that from in Canberra?

captainwhorebags11:36 am 25 May 08

It’s a good idea hax, the snag is solving that whole green energy thing without blowing out the water bill by an order of magnitude or two.

Abundant & reliable.
Cheap.
Green.

Pick any two.

Doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be investigating it and encouraging further green energy research. Shame that the solar rebate has been removed from those most likely to pursue the installation of solar cells.

Green powered desalinzation, leave the rivers alone completely, stop relying on it falling out of the sky.
In fact, washing your car would be adding to the rivers.
That would make using water = good for the environment – how about that.
And we wouldn’t have to worry about upriver towns/cities growing and using more in the future either.
Am I thinking too far ahead?
We have the technology to land on mars, but we can’t dig cheap holes (pipelines)?

Clueless… well,, yeah I see your point. But I’m not shitting on my car.

CanberraResident3:22 pm 24 May 08

Spoonbill has a point. Going green is not cheap.

Minime you theory would work, as long as you didn’t mind if the water coming out of your taps looked like the gritty water you see running down the gutters.

Minime2, if I eat food grown on a farm, and I pass that food out of my body and allow it to return to the farm through the sewerage system, should I have to pay the farmer for the food? Am I not simply borrowing the food?

captainwhorebags9:52 am 24 May 08

Water usage is allocated/measured per household. If you insist that people with more people in a household get a higher threshold for the lower rate, would it then be fair to also base this threshold on the amount of garden someone has? Should a half-acre block be allowed more access to cheap water than a 500sqm block?

What you’re losing in usage charges, you’re gaining in fixed charges. That same single person household has to wear the entire fixed supply charge, whereas you get to split it over five people (yes, I’m aware that perhaps 3 of those don’t pay the bills!)

ACTEW have already raised prices and flat out declared that it was to maintain a profit margin as less water is used. They’re a bunch of money gouging bandits, but lets not forget that the price is set and agreed to by the government.

Vote early, vote often.

Someoneincanb – my point exactly! With 5 in my family our individual usage is restricted to <20kl per annum whereas a single person in a house can use up to five times that amount of water to still qualify for the cheaper rate (ie <99.9kl ).

Good article spoonbill. I do not think they want you to save too much water; the high prices suggest to me ACTEW must love selling their water.
How has this come about that water falling free from the sky is now priced at similar rates to desalinated water.
Over the decades voters have left the job of planning for future water supplies to planners and politicians who unfortunately have failed them through being overly influenced by Green anti-dam media campaigns. Thus most big city major dams are now a few or several decades old, Warragamba, Thomson etc, Googong was completed in the late 1970’s. What was the population it was planned to service ? So through the 80’s and 90’s we have our Govt water utilities steadily creating a water shortage as population rises. Along comes the cyclic post 2000 dryer period and in 2002 the media is full of “worst drought ever” stories, mostly exaggerated. Usually when I examine long term rainfall histories the current post 2000 period is no dryer than the 1940’s or earlier dry events. See my long term rain history for Uriarra as an example.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=156

Rainwater tanks are usually a very expensive option. Unless you had a cheap construction method for a very large tank plus a large roof area, I would be very surprised if tanks turned out to be even near the ACTEW top rate. But if it gives you a warm inner glow… Here is a report into costs.
The cost-effectiveness of rainwater tanks in urban Australia (PDF 498KB)
http://www.nwc.gov.au/publications/factsheet_rain_water_tanks_storm_water.cfm
If you are blessed with surplus money to spend it is worth considering the advantages say, of putting the water tank money towards taking your family on a holiday to Europe.

If Canberra water consumers want water supplied at a cost closer to the cost of providing the service, they have to tell their Govt to stop taxing water, to stop wasting our taxes building the WPP and to get on with augmenting the Cotter dam. Ideally the Tennent dam should have been built.
ACTEW and Govt water policies are examined in a downloadable pdf report at.
http://canberrawaterusers.007sites.com/

Alan Moran has written, “Water Supply Options for Melbourne”. You can download the pdf free.
http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=787

I hope this is not too long for RIOTACT.
Warwick Hughes

Washing my car …..

If I park next to a stormwater drain hole in the street and wash my car, don’t I take the water from the river (dam) via my hose, and then it runs back into the river via stormwater system off of the car? Am I not then just borrowing the water? How is it wasting waterthen?

This not considering washing a $50k car … perceived value -v-perceived value system.

Ffs. Have you considered how much money you’ve saved compared to if you’d used the same amount of water as the previous period?

someoneincanb10:56 pm 23 May 08

Ant – actually that’s not correct. Households that use more, pay more. This does not equate to the same thing.
If you have a household with 2 adults you can use 50kL each per year and get in at the cheap rate.
If you have a household with 2 adults + 4 teenagers you are restricted to 16kL each per year to get in at the cheap rate.
Therefore if you use more, you don’t necessarily pay more.

Did you know you have to pay the fixed charges even if you totally disconnect from the Actew mains! Yep, you get charged for the privilege of having the pipes run past you house.

So once you get past a certain point it doesn’t make any financial sense to reduce your usage any further.

All water charges except usage charges should be abolished. Adjust the kilolitre rate so a normal bill is about the same, but te incentives to use less water are real.

I guess it’s that “user pays” thing. Those who use more, pay more.

yep.

what about water tanks?

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