Chip Taylor

The cost of free water

I used to work for a municipal utility, so I realize how politics can interfere with good engineering and financial practices. But this is ridiculious:

New Yorkers, who long ago accepted the idea of paying dearly for imported spring water to go with dinner, still like to boast that they have the best-tasting tap water in the world.

But many never pay for that high-quality tap water at home, and they get away with it because the city - which runs the water system - never cuts off anybody's water for nonpayment.

Ever.

About 231,000 water customers in New York City are late paying their bills - some by just a few months, others by decades. In all, these water delinquents owe the city more than $625 million in overdue bills and penalties.

Houses and apartments account for 90 percent of those unpaid bills, but the city just absorbs the huge losses and spreads the costs to those who do pay rather than risk the political consequences of being seen as hardhearted.

But the tap may finally run dry. The cost of maintaining the city's mammoth water supply system is rising sharply, with capital improvements estimated to cost $16 billion over the next decade.

And so officials have started working on a plan to selectively cut the water to a few residences with outstanding bills to show that they are serious about collecting those debts.

They didn't even meter the water until the 1980s, they just charged flat fees according to building size. Now, the plan is to start cutting off the richest deadbeats in order to send a message to the rest.

Besides the financial cost to people who do pay their bills, giving away water (or even selling it at a flat rate) has an environmental cost as well. Do you think people worry about avoiding waste under a system like this?