Beverage production can be cut

ANNETTE Lovemore, your letter about residents who can’t afford hikes (“Metro residents can’t afford hikes”, October 19) – no offence, but that was about the best news that I ever heard from you.

But it reminds me of a few months back when you said in an article that the thirsty breweries need their two million litres of water a day to help the economy to grow (“No water cuts for industries”, May 23). That irked me.

Is producing beer and other beverages more important than other important uses for our water?

If there’s no water, how are you going to produce beer then?

We can go without beer and other beverages, but we can’t survive without water.

I know people will lose jobs and work fewer hours, but most of us have lost jobs or worked short time in the past.

We can still try to save on water and electricity, but you can only cut so much.

As for the ridiculous rates hikes, we as residents cannot save, we just have to pay.

What really gets my goat is that you hear on radio every now and then mayor Athol Trollip saying, “Please save water”.

Mr Trollip, you’re right – we must save water, but you must remember that we don’t manufacture water.

It’s a source from nature. If it rains, we will have water. If it doesn’t rain, there is nothing we can do about it.

You can stop increasing our water accounts by huge percentages and charging us a so-called sewerage availability charge which increased after its first year by a staggering 40%.