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The Gold Plating of American Water (worksinprogress.co) 82

Posted by msmash from the diminishing-returns dept.
The price of water and sewer services for American households has more than doubled since the early 1980s after adjusting for inflation, even though per-capita water use has actually decreased over that period. Households in large cities now spend about $1,300 a year on water and sewer charges, approaching the roughly $1,600 they spend on electricity. The main driver is federal regulation.

Since the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, the U.S. has spent approximately $5 trillion in contemporary dollars fighting water pollution -- about 0.8% of annual GDP across that period. The EPA itself admits that surface water regulations are the one category of environmental rules where estimated costs exceed estimated benefits.

New York City was required to build a filtration plant to address two minor parasites in water from its Croton aqueduct. The project took a decade longer than expected and cost $3.2 billion, more than double the original estimate. After the plant opened in 2015, the city's Commissioner of Environmental Protection noted that the water would basically be "the same" to the public. Jefferson County, Alabama, meanwhile, descended into what was then the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history in 2011 after EPA-mandated sewer upgrades pushed its debt from $300 million to over $3 billion.
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The Gold Plating of American Water

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  • Don't you need something to be a metal - an actual metal, not silicon or any semiconductor - before it can be "plated"? I get that water treatment has become horribly expensive, but how is that "plating water"?

  • Never Ending Inflation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @03:46PM (#65940176)
    In 2017 NYC opened a brand new 400 square foot public bathroom in a public park in Brooklyn. It cost $2 million. That's roughly $5000 a square foot. You could walk across the street and purchase a larger home for a quarter of that price. Nobody can account for it's cost. The official response is - shrug, yeah stuff costs a lot.

    It should be an ongoing, continuous, strictly enforced law that any project over a few hundred thousand needs an independent audit conducted. A 10% cost overrun is understandable. A 200%-400% cost overrun is criminal. It happens all the time, continuously, everywhere.
    • I don't understand why things are not more transparent. I would like a breakdown of what dollar goes into who's pocket for what service and why.

      • Re:Never Ending Inflation (Score:5, Insightful)

        by wiggles ( 30088 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @04:11PM (#65940244)

        You know exactly why things are not more transparent -- because we keep electing the people who have a vested interest in keeping things hidden. But what are you going to do - vote for the other party?

        • For NYC we need to check back in a year as that is the type of issue that Mamdani campaigned on working on. He already is starting to lessen the rules for small businesses.

          2017 DeBlasio was mayor and after him New Yorker's did in fact vote for the "other" party and elected Adams who then turned around to be the most corrupt mayor since the 80's (and Giuliani and Bloomberg both ran as R candidates) so it's not pure partisanship at issue.

          https://www.thecity.nyc/2019/0... [thecity.nyc]

          NYC Parks Advocates’ Geoffrey Cr

          • You just watch. Mamdani met with plenty of rich people behind the scenes and they ALL came away with the same conclusion: we're gonna be fine, it's ok.
            Mamdani comes from money. He's just playing the game right.

            • Yeah becasue it's not actually good to chase away your wealthy taxpayers.

              Also let's be really most of those people live in NYC because it's NYC and they are wealthy and that's a very unique experience, they are not leaving because they have to shuffle a few extra 10k in taxes.

          • Mayor Adams is a Democrat.

            I remember how much safer and cleaner NYC became under Guliani. Times Square became a family entertainment hub after decades of squalor and sex-trafficking. Subways became safe to use, and the urine smell began to decline.

    • Re:Never Ending Inflation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nealric ( 3647765 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @03:54PM (#65940200)

      I don't think you could find a new-construction anything in New York City for $500k. You can buy an older 400sq ft apartment for about that, but it will come with substantial annual fees. $2 million will get you a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood, but nothing at all fancy by national standards. A friend of mine who made it big on Wall Street spent well into the 8 figures on an Upper Eastside brownstone. It's smaller and less fancy than your average $500k McMansion in Texas. Long story short, any sort of real estate or construction is extremely pricy in New York, and it doesn't require any sort of fraud or mismanagement for those costs to balloon.

      An independent audit might stop some fraud, but it would further push up the costs and add to red tape in the end because now you need to account for the cost of the auditors (likely $50-100k for any major audit firm). The auditors aren't going to be able to tell you whether the plumber was too expensive. All they can do is trace where the money went to make sure nobody was embezzling. And on a small engagement, they probably aren't going to dig all that hard.

    • It should be an ongoing, continuous, strictly enforced law that any project over a few hundred thousand needs an independent audit conducted. A 10% cost overrun is understandable. A 200%-400% cost overrun is criminal. It happens all the time, continuously, everywhere.

      I'm not saying that mandatory audits are bad, but I have a couple questions on this proposal: (1) How many auditors would this require? Who hires, trains, pays for them? (2) how much would those auditors cost, both in absolute terms, and in the "per-project burden/tax'"to pay for the auditing of the contract? (3) who will take action on the results of any audit, since you're describing a 'forensic audit' that explains how much money has already been spent?

      In government contracting, I've seen a lot of ma

    • They are. I've done it.

      The problem is, the auditors aren't allowed to blow the whistle and enforce consequences. Someone important is siphoning off money? ooooh nooo that might be a bad headline for NYS, so let's brush it under the table!!

      If we blew out even HALF of the bureaucratic sludge from NYS pork contracts we could have a utopia in the city and upstate. But fat asses need more padding, apparently.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by smap77 ( 1022907 )

      Let me see, you're saying that a committee-driven new product with continuously evolving specifications that has to be ADA compliant, vandal resistant, hygenic, and some whole host of other requirements is going to be cheap? How cheap are you expecting?

      If you want cheap, there is a low wall next to the $2M bathroom that would be sufficed, but missed most of the other requirements.

      Get in on the competitive bidding process and rake in the dough.

  • If you dig into the linked reports, the EPA says that the current surface water regulation costs exceed current benefits, but they argue that "potential risks should be treated as probable ones." It sounds to me like they are admitting that current costs are higher than existing benefits because the problems they are designed to mitigate aren't extant now. But they *could* be in the future, so it's better to be set up to deal with it in advance rather than wait until it's an issue that we have to address a
    • The problem with that logic though is the definition of "might be a problem" turning to "requiring a fix". Anything might be a problem. It's all fine and dandy to be proactive about water management when it definitely has public health concerns attached to it, but a few of the stated examples appear at face value to have been extreme. And really the question is who gets to draw the line between requiring a fix for a "might be" and not requiring it? If the EPA has that unilateral decision making, then th
    • $3.2 billion to prevent a problem that wasn't a problem sounds wasteful to me.

      It would be very, very easy to go broke trying to prevent every possible future problem. It would be very sane to wait until which problems are actual.

  • LINK [worksinprogress.co]: “The city was required to build a new plant. By the time the plant opened in 2015, it had taken a decade longer than expected and its cost more than doubled from its original estimate, to $3.2 billion.”

    “The city’s Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection noted that although the investments were massive, to the public the water would basically be ‘the same’. Infections from the two microscopic parasites the EPA was attempting to address were high

    • LINK [worksinprogress.co]: “The city was required to build a new plant. By the time the plant opened in 2015, it had taken a decade longer than expected and its cost more than doubled from its original estimate, to $3.2 billion.”

      “The city’s Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection noted that although the investments were massive, to the public the water would basically be ‘the same’. Infections from the two microscopic parasites the EPA was attempting to address were higher after the plants opened.”

      So, is the conclusion that (1) the wrong solution was chosen or (2) the originally identified problem wasn't really a problem? Obviously the latter implies the former.

      The really big question is whether the idea that "surface water regulations are the one category of environmental rules where estimated costs exceed estimated benefits" is true for all cases, for some cases, or for a small number of cases. The unwritten implication for non-skeptical readers is that it's true for all cases, but that's a very

    • There are four majour bidders:
      a) the lowest one, who calculated some earnings, by extending the projects development time in his internal plans, by knowing: a double the time overrun will be accepted in the end
      b) the medium one who gave a longer estimate and higher price than a) and would have completed it in time
      c) the slightly higher one, who has similar time estimates like b) but wants more money
      d) the one who is a super expert, guaranties a shorter delivery time, but wants the same money as c)

      Who will g

  • Yeah, it's a "minor" problem until (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Inglix the Mad ( 576601 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @03:58PM (#65940212)
    You are the one who has to deal with the problem. All you have to do is look at Flint to see why it costs so much: We've spent decades ignoring our water system in large swaths of the country so that now we're playing catch up. Look at how many cities still have lead service lines.
    • Did the GOP water plan for Flint, demand water be taken from a contaminated lake? Whereupon, the GOP city leaders lied about the contamination affecting children.

  • Thank God! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @04:02PM (#65940222) Homepage

    Do you know how difficult it is to exactly hit the mark on safety? Do you know easy it is to miss detecting a dangerous chemical, bacteria, virus, or fungus?

    If the companies are not complaining about our protection requirements being excessive that can only mean they are ineffective.

    There is no perfection - doing exactly what is known to be necessary means we are not doing enough to protect against the unknown dangers.

    Everyone I know would rather spend more money on water than electricity.

    Most people - including doctors - think we are unknowingly consuming pollutants that are responsible for the increased rate of certain diseases.

    If a politician hole tries to cut the quality of my water, claiming it is too expensive, I will vote against them.

    • Dude, in a civilized country, water costs close to nothing.
      2 person household with a bath tub, and not just showering: $40 for a single year. YEAR not month or day.

      For the prices you morons pay in the US you could fill a swimming poll 10 times a year. With clean drinkable water.

      I payed $60 per month for everything: taxes, garbage, sewage, fresh water and some other services. Fresh drinking water is not even metered per household, but divided per house by total number of inhabitants, multiplied by inhabitant

      • > Dude, in a civilized country, water costs close to nothing.

        Looks like water costs about 3 Euro per cubic meter [waternewseurope.com] (varying wildly by city ofc)

        In NYC, water costs about $5 per 100 cubic feet [nyc.gov], or converting that into similar units, 1.51 Euro per cubic meter.

        I guess most of Europe is less civilized than NYC!

        (For the record, I live not far from NYC and I pay about $1.70/CCF or 0.85 Euro per cubic meter...)

        > It makes no real sense to meter every household instead of the whole house.

        The vast majority of hous

        • EUR 3 per cubic meter sounds high. But is still significantly cheaper than the 100ds of dollars some posters here pay, or the article implies.

          It sounds like you live in an apartment, so not only are your costs for these things lower, they are distributed equally (rather that equitably based on actual usage) among all the other residents, and likely still subsidized on top of that.
          And what exactly would there be subsidized?

          Civil service "companies" are city or state owned, and work "at cost". In other words

          • > EUR 3 per cubic meter sounds high. But is still significantly cheaper than the 100ds of dollars some posters here pay, or the article implies.

            The article references a table on another website, and that table only lists averages of monthly utility costs by state and with a national average. Per the methodology on that site, the cost for water and sewage is based on an assumed 300 gallons (1.14 cubic meters) household per day and utility rates from *another* website that lists basically the same data.

            So

            • Well,

              then they are misleading. The water is not expensive, they only use a shit load of it.

              In Germany a minute shower is about 5liters, that is approx. two gallons per minute. So your 20 - 30 is close.

              Not sure about a bath tube. I think a bath is close to 200l, that is something like 70 gallons.

              Good, my household did not irrigate a garden. But we participated in that, as the water bill was split over 5 house holds.

    • And how many resources should be allocated to "protect against the unknown dangers"? Keep in mind that those resources are going to be reallocated from programs you think are also vital, not from those you don't like.

  • Nope not water (Score:3)

    by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @04:11PM (#65940242)

    Nope. The big bucks is not in water, it's in the sewer. That's why they lumped them together. Around here this town of ~90,000 had to spend like $100M to improve sewer plant outflow so that it was cleaner than the water coming down the river from upstream of the outfall.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      Around here this town of ~90,000 had to spend like $100M to improve sewer plant outflow so that it was cleaner than the water coming down the river from upstream of the outfall.

      Do you consider that a good thing or a bad thing?

      • I'd call it a wasteful, thus bad, thing if they were required to treat sewage until it was cleaner than the natural water into which it was mixed back. I'd call it extremely wasteful if it had to be cleaner than the water coming into the system.

        I can't say if either of those cases were true, just that I'd be annoyed at the waste of tax dollars if they were.

  • One other contributor (Score:5, Interesting)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @04:14PM (#65940256) Journal
    It's easy to point to the NYC plant as an example. The whole article reads like a libertarian hit piece "regulation is da evillll! We're so oppressed. Government can't do anything right."

    I wonder though: how much of the increased cost is due to genuine improvements and maintenance?

    It is worth noting that urban decay in the 70s, 80s, and 90s led to a huge backlog of deferred maintenance. (That, and human laziness in general.) We're constantly hearing stories along the lines of "a water main dating to the 1800s burst....It was never meant to hold up to this." Today lots of cities are painfully (and expensively) working through that backlog, either because leaks/breakage have forced the issue, or because they're finally realizing that those pipes in the ground were never meant to last forever.

    We're also hearing stories about how storm sewers overflowing cause sewage plants to overflow into waterways. This used to just be accepted practice ("well shit...it's shit!"). Now, because we'd like to actually be able to use our rivers without catching e coli, and because climate change makes downpours more common, municipalities are starting to separate storm sewers from sanitary sewers.

    Speaking for myself, my household water bill is never more than $50/mo. (It was about $30/mo until recently, when the city took out a massive bond to...replace all the old pipes, upgrade the treatment plant, and better manage storm water.) For every one of me, there's some household spending 3x as much each month to average $100/mo. Who is using that much water?!

    Still, in my opinion, worth every penny. I've been to places where you couldn't drink the water, and places with no indoor plumbing at all. I really don't mind paying for what I've got.

    • It's easy to point to the NYC plant as an example. The whole article reads like a libertarian hit piece "regulation is da evillll! We're so oppressed. Government can't do anything right."

      Speaking for myself, my household water bill is never more than $50/mo. (It was about $30/mo until recently, when the city took out a massive bond to...replace all the old pipes, upgrade the treatment plant, and better manage storm water.) For every one of me, there's some household spending 3x as much each month to average $100/mo. Who is using that much water?!

      I would love to be paying $50/month for water. I am currently paying more than twice that, and that's for using under 4 CCF per month for a family and a yard. Our usage is insanely low, but I pay $84/month just to have a connection to the city water system here. I agree that costs rise partly due to government regulation, partly for deferred maintenance, and partly for new requirements. I'll add a couple other things: employee retirement plans and greedy investors. Our Public Utilities Commission seems

    • Re:One other contributor (Score:5, Informative)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @06:15PM (#65940498)

      The whole article reads like a libertarian hit piece

      I thought the same thing, so I did a quick googling of the publisher. Manhattan Institute [wikipedia.org] is a "a conservative, New York-based think tank focused on advancing free-market principles, individual liberty, and opportunity" So yeah, certainly a libertarian leaning source. To the rest of your point, I would tend to agree. Clean water to drink, and not dumping shit in the rivers when it rains is a pretty worthwhile investment. Like any other public service, of course there is room for improvement, but I have yet to hear a solution beyond "less regulation".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      Just the "plating" bit gave be flashbacks to simcity 3000 with the complaints of them supposedly having gold fixtures if you dared give them a plumbing maintenance budget.

    • To expand upon this a bit, it is important to realize that "deferred maintenance" tends to artificially lower the price of the good - in this case water/sewer, while costing even more to catch back up.
      So the natural price might be 2, with deferred maintenance the cost is 1, but to catch back up it ends up having to be 3-4, when people were used to 1. It is poor practice all around.

    • The whole article reads like a libertarian hit piece "regulation is da evillll! We're so oppressed. Government can't do anything right."

      So their argument should be to point to private companies doing as well or better for less cost. Unfortunately, typically the opposite is true. For example, in NJ we have a mix of public and private water monopolies in various townships. The quality metrics work out to around the same, but the private water is about twice as expensive. Here's a link that reports on a

  • Maintenance costs are real (Score:3)

    by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @04:22PM (#65940268) Homepage Journal

    The number of single family homes has grown about 70% since 1970.
     
    I don't know what the average age of a sewer is before it needs it's first major repairs or upgrades, but 50 years doesn't seem improbable. Of course your running costs are going to be lower in the first 20-40 years. But the ground shifts, capacity needs upgrading, things fail etc. US population keeps growing, so more and more sewers will hit that magic 50 year mark (or whatever year you pick) where true Total Cost of Ownership becomes apparent. Europe is more expensive than the US, but their population began to stabilize in ~1985 and they've been paying the "sustainable" cost for many more years. The US will see the same result ~30 years after when the population begins to plateau.

  • Once again... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fropenn ( 1116699 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @04:33PM (#65940288)
    ...the public is forced to pay the costs while private companies reap the profits. In my neck of the woods (Midwest, rural, lots of farming), farmers (both corporate and family) and their pigs dump nitrates and lots of other shit (literally) in the water and the public, who should dare to want to actually drink the water, are forced to pay the cost to clean it up.
    • Pig-shit in the water? It's called a feckin-A FARM for good reason. 'Course pigs compete with ducks and geese to pollute water ... but I think swamp-plants &  fish actually like it.  If you don't like cleaning tasks native to out-door / farming life  then move to Detroit and drink lead.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        "'Course pigs compete with ducks and geese to pollute water..."

        Because farmers of course do nothing to protect the water for other users. It's the pig's fault!

        "...but I think swamp-plants & fish actually like it."

        And they're more important than humans! Or at least for the purposes of this conversation they are.

        "If you don't like cleaning tasks native to out-door / farming life..."

        Which are none because farmers are entitled to pollute, according to you.

    • Did you think the farmers weren't also tax/fee-paying members of the public?

      Is the availability of food worth the cost of water treatment?

  • It's not entirely surprising that the costs would double when suburbs keep being built with larger and larger homes on larger and larger plots. You're talking about more and more infrastructure needed to support the same number of consumers, and more energy needed to pump the water.

    But what a surprise this article blames environmentalists. Because god-forbid the peasants have clean drinking water. Despite the rather obvious fact that blaming the EPA doesn't... hold water. You seriously think adding a millio

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "It's not entirely surprising that the costs would double when suburbs keep being built with larger and larger homes on larger and larger plots. You're talking about more and more infrastructure needed to support the same number of consumers, and more energy needed to pump the water."

      What about this sentence do you not understand?: "...even though per-capita water use has actually decreased over that period."

      Larger and larger homes do not require "more infrastructure", greater population density does. Larg

  • Which EPA? (Score:4, Informative)

    by toxonix ( 1793960 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @05:00PM (#65940340)

    "The EPA itself admits that surface water regulations are the one category of environmental rules where estimated costs exceed estimated benefits."

    I'm not saying he's wrong or that the data he presents is flawed. It should be noted that a person complaining about the cost of regulation is the director of research and a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, which is an American 501 nonprofit conservative think tank. They want all forms of deregulation more than they want slavery for women.
    Nobody drinks the water in the airplane bathroom. The EPA does however think it should be drinkable for some reason:
    https://www.epa.gov/dwreginfo/... [epa.gov]

    • Nobody drinks the water in the airplane bathroom.

      It's more expensive to run a potable and non-potable water separately in an airplane bathroom. Yes absolutely people put it in their mouths. People brush their teeth in there, and yes you will find people drinking it too (even if you're not one of them).

      It is a minimum expectation for all water sources available to be safe in an aircraft where it is dispensed to the general public.

      Do you run a lead pipe specifically to your bathroom washbasin?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "Nobody drinks the water in the airplane bathroom. "

      How do you know this? I suspect you are wrong.

      "The EPA does however think it should be drinkable for some reason:"

      So do I, and probably virtually everyone who thinks about it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      Because the alternative of having potentially contaminated water coming out of the a tap, whether it's in the bathroom or otherwise, is somehow better? The water coming out of the faucet in the bathroom came from the same tank and ran same through the same plumbing system as the water in your coffee. I'd prefer neither had e-coli in them.

      • a) tab water is not supposed to contain ecoli, unless you live at a place where water from the tab is declared "non drinkable water" - for example in Thailand water from the tab is not supposed to be drinkable, despite the fact that in most cases it is. In most parts of Europe (all actually?) tab water is drinking water.
        b) your example makes no sense. Ecoli would not survive the coffee brewing ...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          tab water is not supposed to contain ecoli,

          Well, yeah, that's kind of the point I was making. Tap water shouldn't have harmful bacteria in it, no matter what tap it comes out of. This is the comment I was replying to: "Nobody drinks the water in the airplane bathroom. The EPA does however think it should be drinkable for some reason". If you read into the link in that comment, one of the reasons for regulating potable water systems in commercial aircraft is that the onboarding of water can come from sources which have a higher potential of being c

          • Well, I just answered to your comment. Not to your parent.

            I completely agree that air plane water (like on a sailing boat) can not be 100% proof.

            And everyone should know to notice the warning in an airplane.

            I guess the pedantic is you ... as you did not clearly wrote to your parent what you now wrote to me.

            But thanx, now all is clear :P

  • Multiple issues .... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @05:54PM (#65940440) Journal

    One problem I've encountered now in a couple different places I lived is old/failing infrastructure. In one small city (population 6,000-ish), they had a fancy, costly reverse-osmosis water filtration plant that met all the latest government regulations, but most homes still had water that ran a gross yellow/brown at random times of the year, or problems with low water pressure.

    The water lines to homes were often around 100 years old, as well as the sewer system. Nobody had ever really budgeted for upgrading or replacing the sewers because residents *always* complained (even ousting one mayor who campaigned on modernizing it). They simply didn't want to be the ones stuck footing the bill for the whole thing, by way of higher monthly sewer or water bills. After all, water was still flowing and toilets were still flushing -- and there HAD to be some other way it would get done, right? And after the new treatment plant was mandated, bills went way up already.

    Where I live now, the water bill is at least $150 a month or so for 2 adults and no kids (and we don't even water our lawns). We have a newer clothes washer that's supposed to use minimal water, too. They keep telling us a lot of funds are going to modernizing the sewer system, and I do see them tearing up roads all over town to replace pipes. So I feel like it's a bill that's unpleasant, but probably necessary to pay. The part that really kills us though is the hit we take on the electric bills. The house is all electric and built back in the 1940's -- so no insulation to speak of. Just brick behind plaster walls. In cold winter months, bills easily exceed $550-600. Already replaced every bulb in the place with low power LED bulbs, but I've been warned not to blow insulation in the walls or else risk mold/mildew problems, long-term. These old homes were designed assuming they could breathe more.

    • Internal wall insulation is relatively straightforward and retrofitting in older housing with single-skin brick walls similarly so.

      For example:

      https://www.celticsustainables... [celticsustainables.co.uk]

      https://www.smartstoneenergy.c... [smartstoneenergy.co.uk]

      Do the calcs, do not overloook your air movement and general ventilation requirements, and favour natural materials. Gypsum-based plasters are not typically breathable so may need to be removed from internal walls.

      External insulation may be better, less disruptive to install but requires an immediate i

      • Sorry, no. I've looked at solutions for my own house and there are two, both expensive far beyond any benefit:

        1. Rip out tons of plaster, lath, and all window trim and baseboards. Apply insulating board and finish layer (wallboard and skim coat). Build and apply new wooden trim.
        2. Remove all window trim. Apply insulating board, finish layer, and window trim as above. This is less expensive (not cheap), but also reduces the size of each room by 2-3 inches, requiring moving radiators.

        External insulation on a

  • Here in Columbus, OH, we have been hit with a largish H2O cost increase. But it was necessary. We have a combined sewer/runoff system that sent everything to the treatment plant. Problem was that during heavy rainfall, the amount was too big for the treatment plant to handle and the overflow sewage was discharged into the local river. EPA required us to fix it. Columbus went about it in a sensible way. The choices were to build a monster, very expensive tunnel to hold the excess or stop the excess in the 1s

    • In the 60’s, the federal government was paying 90 cents on the dollar to help localities to separate sewerage from storm water systems. Sewer lines have the most exhaustive treatment, whereas storm water systems need efficient, minimal treatment. Rochester, NY made the decision to spend the “10 cents” to buildout those two distinct systems, such that only home sewerage (i.e. toilets, showers, grey water, sinks) empty into the sewage lines, while storm water (i.e. street drains, sump pumps,

  • Giant funnels (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is why every home needs a giant funnel made of solar panels on their roofs. When it shines you get free electricity and when it rains you get free water. When it does neither you get to admire the absurd contraption on your roof. Either way you WIN.

  • $1,300 a Year for Water? (Score:3)

    by DERoss ( 1919496 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @09:36PM (#65940924)

    I wish my water was as cheap as $1,300 a year. My water bills added to $3,678.97 in 2025. In part, that was to pay for the replacement of a 50-year-old above ground water tank with an underground tank. Also, that paid for the ever-rising cost of electricity to pump the water from northern California to southern California. My water bill exceeded the sum of my electricity, natural gas, and phone bills. Note, however, that our water is among the best in the U.S.

    Also in 2025, my sewer fees totaled $1,381.32. The sewage plant thourghly processes its input and then releases the result into a nearby natural creek. The area is an undeveloped watershed that is home to wild animals. Lawsuits against the sewage plant now require that the flow in the stream below the plant must be cleaner than the flow above it despite the fact that excrement from the animals washes into the stream. I am paying for the extra processing of the sewage.

  • I don't understand why water is so expensive, in some places where it's not scarce. In Suffolk County NY where I live, I pay $33 for water. Per quarter, so $8.25 a month. Meanwhile, next door in Nassau County, some folks pay over $100 a month. I just don't get it.

  • Stop complaining that mitigation is expensive after the fact, of course it fucking is.

    Stop allowing fucking greedy companies to pollute and we won't need multi-trillion dollar mitigation campaigns.

    Fucking twats.

    Trying the same shit they did with the sad Native American in the 70s. Blaming people for creating a trash disaster they started.

    The EPA is forcing lazy municipalities to fix problems created by greedy corporations. Go to the source and fix the fucking problem.

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