>Austin, Texas, where the average annual bill rose from $566 in 2010 to $1,435 in 2018
How can anyone justify people paying more than $110 for water and sewers? I pay $20 and even that seems a lot to me.
How can anyone justify people paying more than $110 for water and sewers? I pay $20 and even that seems a lot to me.
Long ago, large landowners noticed you can build a big water project with a state bond issue, use 80% of the water for agriculture, then charge homeowners 50x as much as you charge farmers to pay off the bond.
Then a few years later you declare there's a water shortage, ban restaurants from bringing customers water without them asking, and ask voters to support another bond issue.
$120/month where I live would be 33,200 gallons a month. That’s nearly a gallon a minute.
So for me, my rates are approximately:
* Water - $6.75 per 100 cubic feet
* Sewer - $14.25 per 100 cubic feet
Or, $21 per 748 gallons, which is $0.028 per gallon, and is ~7.75x as expensive as your water rates. I have about an $18/mo water bill, which is for ~640 gallons a month. 33,200 gallons would cost ~$930 a month.
They're in different municipalities, so the rates are different. They could easily be using the exact same amount of water each month.
I don't pay anything extra for it being in the township, it must come out of property taxes or something. But the same company picks up the garbage (Waste Management)
Full spectrum from "I haven't received a bill in 3 years" to "I regularly receive $1500 water bills" etc.
Perfect storm of aging/under-funded infrastructure, horrific bloated bureaucracy, on and on.
I would say probably 40% of my Water / Sewer bill has nothing to do with Water or Sewer....
Those who installed water pumps for the wealthiest living along the lakes in Austin were fantastically profitable before covid19. Water is the new tax in Austin. Water front customers regularly speak of $1000 a month water bills before converting over to lake water . . . which is completely legal, the LCRA charges about $150 a YEAR for over 325,000 gallons of raw lake water.