I've written about Portland's outrageous water bills one, two, three, four times before. And as I said, the bill is not really only water, but also by some hand-waving arithmetic, a sewer bill too. Or some guesstimate that during winter months, a household takes in as much water as it discharges down the drains. Other seasons with lawn watering and the like don't have the same assumption about inflow-outflow.
But the "sewer" charges truthfully don't relate to the cost of moving household effuents across town to where they might be treated for eventual discharge into the environment. No, most of the "sewer bill" is to pay for a century-old deferred maintenance bill due on the crumbly state of Portland sewers. The monthly sewer bill as a cost of operation is fiction. Rebuilding Portland sewers in toto really calls for a massive infusion of capital, as in capital bonds, which of course no voter would willingly approve. So the City has taken the expedient of tacking on a "pay as you go" charge to the water/sewer bill, knowing full well voters have no choice about paying ballooning monthly charges if the alternative is cutting off the household's water.
For the last few years, I've let my ire about Portland's Water Department finance grifters go, and perhaps thinking hot showers are always nice and YOLO, I'd just pay the bill. Until a few months ago. as I wrote out the check for $450+--$150 a month--it came back to me that folks in Central Oregon, Prineville, for example, commonly have water bills of $30 a month.
To cope, some water conservation was in order. I'm now doing two things: 1. Cold showers, lasting no more than 120 seconds. Cold because the water heater doesn't have time to heat the reservoir tank. 2. For too much toilet flushing, invoking the "Yellow, leave it mellow and Brown, flush it down" rule.
Supposedly cold showers build character, but I get past the baptism of cold water by being mindful of the countless souls throughout the world that don't have water for a shower. And I've found a special trick to getting hot water every other day. That is, on the alternate days I run the dishwasher, I do so mornings before I shower. I'm not using any more/any less water and doing so means my shower, minutes later, warms up more readily.
Admittedly, I'm not making a huge sacrifice with my short cold showers, but even trimming that bill from $150+ a month to $120 or so would be a psychic boost in the face of this continuing municipal financial chicanery.
Image credit: alamy.com
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