August 2, 2007
Hill Country Residents Outraged by LCRA Plan to Make Them Pay For Cost of Providing Water Service
The Statesman is reporting that homeowners in western Travis County are shocked and appalled by a new proposal by the Lower Colorado River Authority to increase rates charged for water usage to reflect the high cost of providing water to the hilly, sparsely populated area. LCRA's general manager, Joe Beal, said that another problem is that "People out there use a boatload of water. They irrigate a lot, and they irrigate at the same time." Le duh! All that St. Augustine isn't going to irrigate itself. Joe must have forgotten that the Hill Country is basically a desert and without all that water, the grass turns brown.
Image from Houstonian on Flickr.
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"Le duh! All that St. Augustine isn't going to irrigate itself. Joe must have forgotten that the Hill Country is basically a desert and without all that water, the grass turns brown."
The above statement seems a bit misdirected.
I would say it is the residents who are complaining that have forgotten they live in an arid environment.
I also find it ironic that the Statesman article quoted a man that moved last year from Arizona.
I wonder what his water bill was over there.
I agree with wilceaux. If you're going to live in a desert and still want ridiculous amounts of temperate vegetation on your property, you can pay the premium for it.
Does LCRA have a graduated rate structure that charges less for the first X thousand gallons? The info from the Spaceman only compares one monthly usage (10,000 gallons) which is a few times the amount that a family needs for drinking & sanitary purposes.
At the low densities proposes, they should be grateful that they are getting service at all. Maybe the whiners should check on the cost of installation, operation & maintenance of a reliable (i.e., deep) well before complaining about the cost of clean water delivered right to the house.
The above statement seems a bit misdirected.
Wilceaux, I'm pretty sure Shilli was being sarcastic with the "Le duh" comment. The point of the post is that it was LCRA who made all that surburban sprawl possible in the Hill Country by extending water service to every Tom, Dick and Harry developer with a plat.
Now they're shrieking that all those rich folks are dumping too much precious fluid on their lush lawns. Physician heal thyself.
I believe the schedule provided at the bottom of the Statesman article is the full graduated structure:
Gallons - Current - 2008 (proposed)
5,000 - $38.70 - $54.40
10,000 - $52.70 - $77.15
25,000 - $105.20 - $173.15
50,000 - $248.95 - $406.90
75,000 - $411.45 - $701.90
100,000 - $573.95 - $996.90
The fact that the scale goes up to 100,000 (per month!) is a little mind boggling. If you run the numbers, it isn't actually progressive - users of 25,000 gallons per month are charged less per gallon than users of 5,000 gallons per month.
In Austin, residential single-family customers are charged on a graduated scale per 1,000 gallons of $0.88 for the first 2,000 Gallons, $2.30 for the next 7,000, $3.88 for the next 6,000 and $6.91 after that.
That type of strucure, where the first 2,000 gallons is very low cost and rates rise quickly after that makes more sense to me. I'd rather see the increase be much sharper, such that a single family residential home (in Austin or the Hill Country) using more than a few thousand gallons a month would be charged very dearly.
Also, I like to think of my posts not as satire, but more as something similar to the work of Mark Rothko - open to a wide variety of interpretations, often revealing more about the viewer than they do about the artist. When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
I'm gazing into the abyss, but all I'm seeing is a 6-BR split-level mansion, with swimming pool & cabana in back.
I live next door to LCRA.
Is my water free?
Why would anyone be watering their grass when it's rained 75 inches last month?
I'm glad they are finally paying the true costs to supply them water in the middle of nowhere. It's not fair to have others subsidize their lifestyle.