1. More expensive water
2. Hubris.
Let’s talk about them in that order.
Yes. Watering our lawns – and let’s face it, that’s where the money is going – is more expensive now that the city is metering water. Our bill, for example, reached $68.44 for using 38,440 gallons of water. Why, that’s . . . an infinitely small amount of money per gallon of water.
In fact, that’s just under two/fifths of a cent for a gallon of water. Mathematically, that’s 0.0017 cents per gallon. (That’s $68.44 divided by 38,440, for the mathematically impaired.)
I have on my desk, folks, 29 cents. That’s enough to pay for about 170 and ½ gallons of Ammon water. The average American, showering for just over eight minutes, uses 17.2 gallons of water. That twenty-nine cents is ten showers in my hand.
Granted, that’s a lot more than we paid when we first moved here in 2015. For the same month, we paid $37.25 for the water we used.
How much did we use? Don’t know. The water wasn’t metered then.
But it didn’t matter. I could run the sprinklers 24 hours a day on my watering days. Let the tubs and toilets overflow all week long. Washed every car in the neighborhood. And I still would have only paid that flat $37.25 fee.
And you may have noticed Ammon is growing? I lived in Lincoln when I was a kid, and remember Ammon having a population equivalent to Sugar City’s 1,242. We’re pushing 16,000 now. More than ten times the population. Probably using more than ten times the water.
And you want city responsibility? You want your elected leaders looking out for you? How about them looking out for us in making sure we have water in the future, enough water through the state’s byzantine water rights system so that when the time comes to take a shower or flush your potty, you’re not paying a hell of a lot more for the privilege?
Water’s not just this magical liquid that comes out of the ground. It has to get there first. And according to the Idaho Department of Water resources, the amount of water in that Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, the one the city draws its water from, has been on a downward trend since the 1950s. That’s almost 70 years, folks.
Yes, there’s been a recent – very recent – uptick in the amount of water in the aquifer. That’s thanks to a lot of farmers and cities and other organizations who looked at this precious, dwindling resource and said we’d better do something about it.
Now your city’s taking action, taking action to make sure you have water when you need it, even if you have to pay a little bit more for it. And you don’t like it.
That’s hubris, folks. Yours. Not the mayor’s. Not the city’s. Yours.
Because there’s certainly a lot more expensive water to be had out there, folks.
I could go right now to Walmart and buy 32 bottles of Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water, 16.9 fluid ounces per bottle, and pay $1.17 a gallon for that water.
And I should add we moved here from Sugar City, where there were some summer months we were paying about $200 a month for that city’s metered water, and our lawns were a lot more brown than they’ll ever get at our house in Ammon.
There’s your expensive water, folks.
But that’s not important. What’s important is the hubris.
When I hear people say “I thought we elected you to protect the people” and the people are complaining about having to pay for more water, all I really hear the people say is “We want to continue getting free stuff.”
Because that’s what unmetered water is. Free water. Pump out all you want, and pay only a flat fee for it.
It’s Obama water, folks, just like those Obama cell phones. Your water welfare is getting cut off, and you don’t like it.
I’m not going to go further into why we should be paying for the water we use. Because it’s clear this argument isn’t about facts and logic – I’ve watched people on social media complain despite ample facts and logic offered by the mayor, the city, on why we have to pay for the water we use. This argument is all about emotion.
It’s all about a little corner of the Ammon Welfare State getting cut off and people not liking it.
Want a visual of what it could be like? Maybe watch the “Nurse Doctor” episode of MASH, where Major Charles Emerson Winchester the Puffed has his family mail him Vichy water to get him through a water crisis at the camp.
Why choose a fictional story?
Because it shoves the facts and logic away. It speaks to the emotions we’re all expressing.
Besides, real-world examples are too icky and filled with facts – and this one took place in Africa! Why, they’re all jungle natives there anyway, and back in the 1980s all the stars got together and sang a song and EVERYTHING WAS MAGICALLY FIXED. Such a water shortage couldn’t possibly happen here.
But of course it could.
Thinking otherwise? More hubris.
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