Or, like that box of chocolates, you don't know what you're going to get. At this very moment, I don't know what I'm going to give you.
Tea! Just poured a nice Moroccan mint tea as I started this. After all, it's only 18 C outside, after a while of high 20's and low 30's. It's not winter yet, but soon. All too soon.
The Newfoundland book actually arrived yesterday, and I blogged it on my other blog because it was mostly about photography and encouraging photographers to print their work. Well, it arrived in the sense that I had to go get it, which I had been willing to do on Friday. Still, I'm pleased.
This batch of flowers is still doing well.
I'd written this all up in March and April, but somehow never got around to posting it, even with all the issues with Calgary's water supply.
Looking at our last bill from the City. Water costs us $1.4643 per M3, plus another $1.6905 per M3 for 88% of the water supplied for a wastewater charge. We used 11 M3 from mid Jan to mid Feb, so our fee is
11 x $1.4643 = $16.11 (rounded up to the nearest cent)
11 x .88 x $1.6905 = $16.36 (rounded down to the nearest cent)
Total of $32.47, or .3 CENTS per litre. Less than a third of a cent per litre for potable water supplied, and wastewater taken away and treated. That's a great deal!
Except we're not done. There's a water service charge of $12.61 and a wastewater service charge of $23.87 on top of the meter rate. There's more stuff on the bill for storm water runoff charges, and a fee for the Black, Blue, and Green carts, but we're going to look past those.
So the actual total cost to us for water supply and removal is $32.47 for usage costs, plus 36.48 for service charges = $68.95, which for 11M3 comes out to just over .6 cents per litre. Still a good deal.
Except, I've no idea how they came up with the service charge amounts, and they just went up dramatically this month. My problem is that I remember Calgary pushing to get water meters installed in all residences, with the idea that people would pay for the amount they used, and fair enough. Except now, as near as I can tell, with the service charges adding up to more than the usage, there is no incentive to save water.
Could we use less than 11 M3 of water in a month? Almost certainly. But say we cut our water use by 10%. That saves me a whole $3 or so, out of a total water related bill of $70 or so. Big whoop, as we used to say. Or lets say we really crack down and cut our water usage to 5 M3. Repeating the above calculations:
5 x $1.4643 = $7.32
5 x .88 x $1.6905 = $7.44
Total of $14.76 or (surprise) .3 CENTS per litre.
Plus the service charge of $36.48 is a total of $51.24. Big picture, I cut water usage in half, and my bill goes from $68.95 to $51.24. Not a lot of incentive to cut water usage.
The bill says the service fees are to cover administration costs. Bah! Things like this are why the populists always howl that they can come in and cut the fat. If the administration costs are more than the cost of the service, I get their point.
(And in a current aside, the water charges and fees add up to a boat load of money that was to support the maintenance of the water system. If it went elsewhere, that's malfeasance by management. If it did go to maintenance that didn't find the breaks before the failure, that's incompetence, or managerial over riding of engineering competence. Heads need to roll at City Hall! And this problem existed long before Gondek was elected.)
The classic economic solution to a shortage of a product is to raise the price to reduce demand, and you keep doing that till demand equals supply. That's fine for many products, but we're talking water here. Essential for life and all.
Just for comparison, when I go to Co-op to buy water for making wine, they charge me $1.99 for 11.3 litres, or 17.6 cents per litre. Supposedly is purified and whatever, but they start with the same water I get from the tap. Some of the bottled water companies start with the same water, don't do anything to it but put it in a plastic bottle, and charge multiple dollars per litre.
So here we are in September, with more repairs happening to the big pipe that is essential to move water around Calgary, and make efficient use of our treatment plants. They say they'll be done on the 23rd, and I don't know anyone that really believes that. After the initial big break, they started looking for problems. Which I'm pretty sure they already knew about. They found several more and fixed them, then put the pipe back for medium duty service. Then they looked some more and found 20 or so more places that needed fixing.
Does anyone believe that if a chunk of pipe has degraded so badly that it MUST be repaired right now, that the pipe immediately up or down stream is just fine? No, I didn't think so. I will bet money that at some point in the near future, say within a year, there will be more repairs to that pipe. And more, and more, until they rip the whole thing out of the ground and replace it. Let's hope that first they build out piping for alternate paths for water supply.
But that would require planning.
And I'm not going to talk about the Green Line and planning. Not gonna.
Of the Day
Driftwood (NZ)
A nice view of one of the nicest chunks of driftwood that I've ever come across. This is Tata beach. You've seen other photos of it periodically.
Driftwood (NL)
This is as found, with a dramatic backdrop.
Film I have to come clean. This is not as found.
Linda, also film.
Found during an evening stroll in Twillingate.
Newfoundland
More of the dramatic backdrop. Arches Provincial Park.
