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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> The Air Force delivered free five-gallon jugs of water to the Mendez home for more than two years. In 2018, it paid to have the house connected to the municipal water system. Ruben Mendez said he now pays $100 a month for water he used to get for free.

Sorry, what? 100$ a month for residential water? Either this guy is running a farm operation or something is seriously broken.

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Municipalities kept water and sewer rates too low for decades, and now we need to spend $1 trillion over the next 25 years to upgrade systems and catch up with deferred maintenance: https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_w...

As incredible as it is, $100 appears to be below average monthly cost nowadays for a 4 person family[0] using 150 gallons / person / day [based on a random study that quick search found].

I am not sure who would use 150 gallons a day though. Even 50 gallons (~189 liters) seems a lot to me. If you factor in irrigation system, etc. then maybe you would get to these gallon volumes.

[0] https://www.circleofblue.org/2018/water-management/pricing/p...

My town has a floor that's about 100 gallons per day that I'm always under. My bill, with no sewer, is more than $20/month. $100/month for water seems high in that, anecdotally, electrical and oil bills are a much bigger deal for most people than water. OTOH, $100/month doesn't seem out of the realm of reasonableness either.

Meanwhile I pay $630 every six months for water no matter how much or little I use. So $100 a month seems right on to me.

I confess to being a bit surprised but, based on the comments, it certainly seems as if $100/month is within the normal range for water bills, even for light use.

I pay nothing (monthly). But I am rural, and have my own well and septic system. Which cost, if I remember right, $5000 decades ago when built. Which amortizes to maybe $20/month.

Do you test your water for impurities and chemicals?

Sure. But the water is from 111' down, and got there 10,000 years ago. So probably not an issue.

The big consumers are stuff like toilets (~2 gallons/flush), showers (2-3 gallons/minute), and lawn care.

So you have 3 people who take a 10 minute shower, and flush the toilet 4 times each, that's 112 gallons/day right there.

112 gallons a day is not a lot. We have exactly this and our water bill is $25/month in the SF Bay Area. Our SERVICE CHARGE just to have water is about $30/month whether we use water or not.

Lawn care is the most expensive part, that can be hundreds of dollars a month, depending on how much water you use.

When I lived in Vancouver, BC, our house had a flat water rate of $40/month. My parents would use water until the cows came home, would leave the faucet running while walking around the house, etc. When they came to visit here, I made sure they broke themselves of that habit very very quickly.

https://kfor.com/2019/09/03/im-just-frustrated-edmond-reside...

Where I live people's bills are going from $100 to over $600 a month. I saw someone's post on Nextdoor saying that their bill was $2700. Ours was $963 up from about $270 with no change in usage. I would be thrilled to pay $100 a month for water.

The person in the article said he was watering his lawn for $40/month previously. The fact that it jumped to $250 while maintaining his watering habits does not garner much sympathy from me. Were it $250 so that he might hydrate his children and maintain a reasonable standard of living, well that's another thing. But just so your grass doesn't go dormant? Here, water your grass with my tears.

In summary, I think some poor examples were chosen.

People's overall quality of life matters, and it's nice to have a lawn...

Also, you realize plant life is an important carbon sink, right? Is watering backyard trees worthy of your spite as well?

>Here, water your grass with my tears.

Perhaps you're on the wrong site, with this sort of attitude.

Putting pipes in the ground is not cheap, and it needs to be paid for. There are also pumps, treatment, and maintenance that needs to be paid for. When you have a dense city that isn't a big deal because your share of the above isn't very expensive. However when you have a sparse rural area your share goes up. In a city public water systems are cheaper than drilling a well, but in rural areas a private well is cheaper - but if the ground water isn't safe to drink the treatment can be out of reach.

In your bigger cities 100 dollars a month is about average or even low for a family. Unless he has almost no use I don't see the issue.

Nobody running a farm is wasting expensive municipal water on irrigation when they have a perfectly functional well on the property. I'm not sure it's even possible to run an economically solvent farming operation off municipal water in the US for any crop other than maybe indoor weed.

Many farms in the US run off a municipal water supply. Only in the west do farms have irrigation systems. When you get east of the Missouri river there is enough rainfall to water the crops and so you don't have any irrigation needs (I don't know why the climate changes so drastically on this line but it does). Even if you have a well, if you are east of the river it is only for household and livestock use, not irrigation.

I live in the midwest and irrigation is definitely used around here. Not for all crops but there has been a huge increase in the usage of irrigation over the past decade. There's usually enough rain but irrigation still helps make yields a lot more consistent.

I live in Sarasota Florida, my water and sewer bill is 100.

Sewer is usually twice the price of water, so 33 water and 66 sewer.

My actual water/gas usage fee is just a few dollars a month, but there's a "base station fee", for what I presume to be infrastructure, that pushes my bill to just over $100 per month.

LOOOL I wish my residential water bill (for a normal sized house and very small yard) wasn't $100+, but it has been for MANY years.

He might be up in the mountains

$25 a month for water in KY

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