Government Rewarded Water Conservators by … Raising Water Rates!
We’ve all been told how important it is to conserve water. But municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area are find out the inconvenient truth about water conservation: the high cost of using less water.
Asked about declining water consumption, [Durham Region's works czar Cliff Curtis] told the Star: "Conservation is killing us."
Realizing what he’d just said, Curtis smiled broadly and quickly added that there were, of course, a thousand reasons to conserve.
But one thing is certain: Conservation is putting cash-strapped municipalities in a bit of a pickle.
So, what do local governments do when their campaigns of asking their citizens to use less water are actually working? They raised the water rates:
Peel Region treasurer Dan Labrecque estimates his region has lost $7 million to so-called "revenue or billable flows shortfall." The need to make up for that lost money accounts for nearly half of Peel’s proposed 16 per cent water rate hike (expected to be phased in at 12.5 per cent). [...]
"It’s ironic," chuckled Mississauga Councillor George Carlson, chair of the city’s environment committee, speaking of the success of the water-conservation message. The payoff for cleaning up our act may be that we end up paying more.
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