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Comment by msandford | Hacker News Reader

> OK then. It is insanely wasteful of water.

It's only a "waste" if the water is scarce. People rarely talk about wasting air (except to call someone dumb) because the air is virtually unlimited.

For example in the UK it's damn near impossible to waste water because it rains so consistently. Water isn't scarce. You can't really waste it, because there's always plenty more.

Even if you could pipe the water from NYC all the way to CA it'd be prohibitively expensive.

So the only way this is "waste" is if it's depleting the aquifer faster than it replenishes. That's possible of course. But unlikely, because NYC has been huge for hundreds of years now. If they're depleting aquifers it's only very slowly.

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Here in the UK we do have pretty regular problems with the water supply, to the point that hosepipe use is sometimes regulated. There's even a website you can check to see if there's currently a hosepipe ban: http://www.hosepipeban.org.uk/hosepipe-ban-current-situation...

It does rain a lot here, but there's also issues with the size of the reservoirs and the amount of water being drawn.

Point taken!

I visited Scotland in the spring and there was water trickling everywhere. I should have qualified my statement much better.

The other error I made was extrapolation from Scotland to the whole of the UK. Here in the US it takes a lot of travel to go from one "region" to another, and the conditions change slowly. But I could see that the whole of the UK doesn't necessarily have uniform conditions either.

Some numbers:

The current water rate for NYC is $3.81/hcf. For sewage, $6.06/hcf.

The current water rate for LA is $5.23/hcf. For sewage, about $4.23/hcf.

One "hcf" is 100 cubic feet, or about 748 gallons.

Hopefully, the water sprayed from the hydrant is treated before being released. Most groundwater in LA is treated unless the rain overwhelms the treatment facility. This implies that in either case, the cost is about $10/hcf.

This would be one way to put a price on running water -- and to me, it implies that this counts as "waste".

Sources:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwaterboard/html/rate_schedule/ind...

https://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/faces/ladwp/aboutus/a-financesan...

Stolen water is conceptually distinct from wasted water.

People who use hydrants without paying for them are technically stealing that water, but they are not "wasting" it in any sense that actually matters to New York. Unlike in California, there is no risk of one day turning on your tap and having nothing come out. They, unlike California, are not running out of water.

> "Hopefully, the water sprayed from the hydrant is treated before being released. Most groundwater in LA is treated"

1) NYC does not use groundwater. The vast majority of their water comes from an extensive system of reservoirs, tunnels and aqueducts, gravity fed straight into the city.

2) Because their water comes reservoirs located in wilderness regions of New York, their water is naturally filtered and is pure enough to drink with next to no treatment. They only add chlorine to that water.

3) The water you get from a legally tapped fire hydrant is no different from the water you get from an illegally tapped fire hydrant.

You missed my point regarding the groundwater. My point is that the runoff from the hydrant must be treated before being released, and that treatment has a cost, which is reflected in the sewage rates.

Your other points regarding the origins of NYC water don't affect my argument: despite the apparent effortlessness of getting the water to that Bronx hydrant, said water has a price which is substantially the same in NY as in other areas like CA.

Perhaps that value is of interest when deciding whether there is any significance to spraying loads of it out through a hydrant, versus being parsimonious (i.e., "waste").

Stealing sewage services still isn't "wasting water". It's regrettable, but I think NYC can withstand the additional budgetary strain caused by kids playing with hydrants.

> "despite the apparent effortlessness of getting the water to that Bronx hydrant, said water has a price which is substantially the same in NY as in other areas like CA."

That's just all the more proof of Californian's absolute insanity when it comes to distributing water.

> So the only way this is "waste" is if it's depleting the aquifer faster than it replenishes. That's possible of course. But unlikely, because NYC has been huge for hundreds of years now. If they're depleting aquifers it's only very slowly.

This is exactly the case. NY/NJ are depleting the groundwater faster than it comes back, but not at a great rate and it is nowhere near a problem yet.

NYC doesn't use groundwater: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/drinking_water/groundwater....

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