Recently, I was examining the new City of Castlegar water plan.
Under the new system, we would all be billed for 30 cubic metres of water per month whether we used them or not. If our usage per month went beyond the 30 cubic metre cap, we would pay extra for each additional cubic metre of water.
This would be disastrous for many homeowners in the summertime. The idea the city is putting forward is that a threshold will push owners to reconsider the amount of water they’re using and ultimately use less.
If I were being cynical, I’d declare this to be another example of stating one thing but having an ulterior motive. As some of my neighbours are commenting, the city says they want to save water by having a threshold, but really they want to make more money.
To be fair, the city does not want to make more money. It merely wants enough residential money to cover the cost of running the water system—the water, the pumps, the tanks, the pipes, the barriers, the buildings, and the related personnel. So for this initiative, there is no ulterior motive. Saving water is important, and a metre-threshold is how they’re hoping to do it.
I want to do a bit of comparison to another “usage threshold” we all have to deal with — that of electricity. In this area, we receive our electricity from Fortis. Recently, Fortis moved its central operations into Castlegar, and we’re all grateful. Indeed, Fortis has always been a good community partner.
But then look at our electricity bills. In the past, we were always charged a single flat rate for our usage. A couple of years ago, this single-charge system changed. Fortis announced that in order to have consumers use less electricity, it was instituting a “threshold” or two-tier system. Stay under a particular kilowatt-hour usage and the rate would be one price, but go over that kilowatt-hour cap and the rate would be higher.
The threshold for “residential conservation” [their words] is 1,600 kWh per billing period, which is usually about two months. Our neighbours, who are careful and committed to keeping costs down, tried to hold their power usage to below this cap. They made efforts to turn off lights behind them and only used lights in the rooms they were occupying. At night, they turned everything off including the blue and red monitor lights for various appliances.
When their Fortis electric bill arrived, our neighbours discovered they had still used beyond 1,600 kWh for the billing period. So, they had to pay more for the kilowatt hours beyond the threshold because supposedly they were not working hard enough to save the environment.
So I checked Fortis’ billing structure. All residents pay a base charge of $32.09 for a 60-day period. The first 1,600 kWh are charged at 10.117 cents per kilowatt-hour. Additional kilowatt hours are billed at a rate of 15.617 cents per kWh. So, if you go over the “threshold,” you will pay a third more for your additional electricity. The rationale, as Fortis has indicated, is to make residents use less electricity.
However, it’s nearly impossible to remain beneath the 1,600 kWh cap, so the extra charges are merely a Fortis money grab. It’s an example of saying one thing but meaning another thing. What irks is that the BC Utilities Commission went along with this subterfuge about “conservation.”
In contrast to Fortis, the city comes through like a breath of fresh air. We may not like the additional costs of water in the summer, but the additional water fees are not filling the city coffers.