Meters can help butwe must cut our water usage
Itwas amuseum exhibit I saw years ago. There was a vast array of plastic 1.5-litre bottles lined up on the wall and you had to guess how many litres the average person used per day. I pressed the button and the bottles lit up – hundreds of them. I realised it was more than double the amount I had estimated.
And it’s not just the water we drink – that’s a tiny amount. It’s the dishwasher, bath, shower, garden and car-cleaning water we use. Although it must be said that I’ve been faithfully fulfilling my civic duty for decades by only washing my car once a year.
Wellingtonians are estimated to use 370 litres of water a day each, including commercial use and water lost through leaks. Residential users are estimated to use just under 230 litres a day each. That’s 70 litres a day more than Aucklanders and double that of Australians.
Why so much? It’s not like we all have swimming pools to service. We do lose over 30 million litres of water a day thanks to pipe leaks but, even taking that into account, we are profligate users. The trouble is, with such high usage and with drought a real possibility in the future, we could, according to a recent report for Wellington Water, simply run out.
According to the same report, ametering system for Wellington would be cost-neutral and would, more importantly, reduce our overall consumption. The logic of meters is strong: if you pay for something per unit, then you are more likely to reduce needless waste. Water is not an unlimited resource and, if current consumption continues, the region will soon have to build a new $250m storage lake.
Yet anyone who remembers the privatisations of the 1980s and 90s has every right to be suspicious of water meters, as they turn water into a commodity, rather than a service. In the past, we were told that commodification of utilities was simply to improve efficiency and help consumers. That was a lie, and corporatisation led to privatisation.
According to A tale of two networks, a paper written by Jim Turner and Dick Werry, between 1990 and 2010 the price of our publicly owned water in Wellington went up by 17 per cent. That’s less than the inflation rate. During the same period, the local price of electricity increased by 295 per cent. One can understand why councillor Iona Pannett and others may be suspicious of water meters.
But can a council bring in meters in order to reduce consumption yet ensure that the public asset can’t be sold? One would hope so, and I trust our city councillors are considering exactly that.
But surely a council dominated by Labour and Green councillors would never privatise an asset? Don’t forget they voted to essentially privatise land at Shelly Bay just a fortnight ago, and the privatisation of the street works (CityOps) happened under Green mayor Celia Wade-Brown, who voted for it along with Justin Lester.
Another consequence of water metering is that the vulnerable could pay more. That has certainly happened in the past when user-pays has been applied, though one would hope that a system, as advocated by some councillors, could be implemented where households paid very little for a reasonable amount of water, then progressively more after that.
In other words, an elderly person in a small house pays little, while the wealthy swimming pool owner pays a lot more. Let’s not forget that businesses should also pay their fair share.
I’ve been faithfully fulfilling my civic duty for decades by only washing my car once a year.
So could water meters lead to an overall decrease in usage with most residents paying the same or less? I believe they could, provided the private sector is keptwell away from ownership.
When meters were introduced in Ka¯piti in 2014, there was a 26 per cent drop in water use the next year. According to water manager Martyn Cole, twothirds of homes in the district ended up paying less for water under the metering system.
Will water meters be a silver bullet? No way. Even if we reduce our personal use, our increasing population may mean more storage lakes have to be built. Though you might not believe it after the November we’ve just had, climate change meanswe could be in for some long and severe droughts in the future.
But let’s also remember that Wellingtonians respond well to a crisis. In 2013, Wellington had a summer drought and only 20 days of water left. In the subsequent few weeks, residents reduced their usage by 20 per cent with comparatively little pain involved.
As well as considering water meters, our local bodies should be doing everything they can to fix existing leaks. They would also do well to spend money promoting water conservation, such as using ‘‘dirty’’ grey water for gardens.
They could also look at subsidising home collection tanks. And I promise to do my little bit by not washing my car for at least another year.