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Comment by ldoughty | Hacker News Reader

When I lived in a rural area on septic and well, my electric bill was often under $200 in the summer, running AC fairly heavily, and taking care of ~6 dense garden beds full of veggies for ~6 months... and regularly watering 1 acre of grass to keep it from drying too much. We even had a timer to auto-water the garden and parts of the lawn... We'd even let it run overnight on a few occasions (needing to water, but coming home very late)

I hardly considered water a costly resource

On "city" water now in suburbs, I followed a similar pattern for grass on a 1/4 acre lot, and heavily watered the lawn one month, and I had a $300 water & sewer bill -- on top of my $100 electric bill.

Water went from being something I hardly considered to something I am far more careful about 'wasting'.

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I'm not really sure what you're getting at. Like others have said, “Water can’t be free anywhere” seems to be inevitable at a commercial level--but dystopian on an individual level. If you had neighbors in your rural area aggressively pumping water out of the ground your well would dry up...and you'd be paying "market price" for it.

Just looking at water usage when I owned a house, irrigation uses a ridiculous amount of water relative to everything else individuals use to live--including laundry, bathing, dishes, etc. If memory serves, sewage costs are significantly more than the water itself (and sewage as metered off of water consumption--so you're likely paying sewage feeds on water you're irrigating with).

The actual cost of enough clean drinking water for people is very small. Enough that drinking fountains are common and people shouldn't need to ration drinking water.

> Like others have said, “Water can’t be free anywhere” seems to be inevitable at a commercial level--but dystopian on an individual level.

This is why we need a democracy with human rights being protected [1,2].

If not even fundamental things like water (or air) is free, you have to ask yourself how did we get here and how do we leave?

1: https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/human-rights-water-and-s... 2: https://truthout.org/articles/un-declares-water-and-sanitati...

Yep, this is why we need a water price and dividend system.

Whenever you use water it is tracked and you pay the market price. All of that is then collected and put into a pot. It is then given back equally to everyone.

Everyone is thus incentivized to use less and those that use less than the average amount of water - a huge majority of people since the heaviest users use so much - will receive more money than they spent.

> It is then given back equally to everyone.

Use it to fund the government.

Eh, NIT and any sort of UBI are mathematically the same thing given you still have an income tax and can adjust the percentage. This just accomplishes that goal in a progressive way.

Well.. if your grass would dry out and become yellow without watering it, then watering is a luxury. The water in deep wells will eventually run out. Why waste it on grass?

Because my HOA says I have to maintain a green lawn or I get fined.

No dog in this fight. I moved out of Scottsdale to the Great Lakes region a bit back partly because of the water issue. So I definitely get the natural inclination to not want to have to think about water.

All that said, I mean, if your HOA requires this, is the problem with the city charging for water use to upkeep the infrastructure required to deliver it? Or is the issue really just that your HOA has rules that it shouldn't?

Yea but the discussion is around water usage practices. Deciding we have to waste water because HOAs say so is of course silly. They need to change.

> Because my HOA says I have to maintain a green lawn or I get fined.

And this is why I don't live somewhere where I'm ruled by an HOA

Any HOA that requires green lawns should be required to pay a tax of minimum $100 per lawn per year it oversees. Its a stupid wasteful policy

I would be calculating the fine vs water bill comparison.

Or ripping up the lawn to plant something more sensible.

Or just not living somewhere where an HOA can tell me what to do with my own house

> The water in deep wells will eventually run out. Why waste it on grass?

That's a different regulation issue. We shouldn't be overdrawing from those deep wells at almost any price, outside of extreme emergency.

> Water went from being something I hardly considered to something I am far more careful about 'wasting'.

Water being "free" from a well probably doesn't help with aquifer longevity, at least at larger scales.

I landscaped with native plants that require no water beyond the rain.

It saves me a ton on water bills and lawn maintenance time & expense. As a bonus, the deer won't eat the native plants.

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