Oh oh, there is money here so I am sure that the meters will be manditory....

We already pay for water, except that we all pay the same no matter how much we use.

With meters, I will be sure to tap into my neighbour's hose bib, while they are out working, to water my lawn.

;-)

Another regulation in this town...just what we need....And we live in the free world....
But council smells a few bucks here...and will then complain about over costs for administration and costs of meters...and there goes the taxes again..Well maybe they can use the few dollars to fill a couple more pot holes......
Dominican is looking better all the time...

Water meters will bring a bit of money to city hall. The big money will come in the winter, when it is cold, and the public works guy says to leave your water running to avoid freeze ups!
Can you see it now?
Or a line on your property breaks, and the water runs for days-and you pay for every wasted drop!
Then if they base the sewer rate on the water consumption, and you water your lawn or wash your car, you will pay as if it swished into the sewer line!
Oh, for heaven's sake-what about that Communities in bloom?
All that watering to beautify the city-those lovely flowers can get pretty expensive in your garden-increased water and sewer fees!
Heck, why worry-at least you will have a bit of time to adjust.
Just have to learn to "go with the flow."
No pun intended.

The water meter scam is hooked into getting some money from the Feds. The City in order to get Green Money has to show that they are doing something to conserve water etc;; The only thing they can come up with so far is water metering and that stupid idea to heat some private and city buildings downtown with heated water, generated from the burning of woodwaste.

There is no need for metering or steam/water heat.

There is a definite need for a huge change at City Hall. Somehow we have to stop the foolishness.

One saving grace is that at this point, they would make it mandatory for all new construction etc;

Once this mini boom busts. There will be very little construction in this area, and therefore the metering effort will fail. However the money will be spent by then.

We have two rivers running through this town. We have a natural spring fed brewery. We have world class spring water out east of town. We can count on some snow each winter to replenish our watersheds.

Now, someone at city hall in their great wisdom has found a way to charge the poor homeowners more and encourage them to use less.

Many union contracts seem to want to be paid more and do less for it. Eventually, many people will not be able to afford to own a home.

I'm all for paying for what I use. I am also for everyone paying for what they use. The burden seems to always fall on the backs of the hardworking homeowner who through their taxes, provide all of the benefits everyone enjoys.

Our burden is becoming heavier and heavier. Where is the incentive to own your own home? Chester

They will likely hire Accenture to administer the billing. That is how it’s done elsewhere. Accenture owns all the important politicians and you need look no further than BC Hydro privatization for evidence. Accenture as we all know was created by the directors of Auther Anderson just before the Enron scandal broke and is the company AA's principles jumped ship to like rats after the Enron fraud on the public was coming to light. I'm sure they will be mentioned in the near future as a possible solution to the water billing problems.

IMO water is an essential infrastructure that is a shared responsibility to be maintained by all of society, and thus in a way subsidizing the right of water for the less fortunate through investment in infrastructure, but not pricing the use of water as a commodity.

In a region like ours that has plentiful supply of water there is no need for water rationing. Metering a perpetual system like a water meter will cost far more in administration costs than any savings to a system that is no where near its capacity.

It could almost be argued that the opposite would be true in Prince George in that encouraging more water usage would reduce the per unit overhead costs as we bring the system closer to capacity flow rates for little additional costs to the system.

Water metering in PG to me is like saving your dinner left overs’ for that starving kid on TV from Ethiopia, even though the logistics involved would far exceed the cost benefit ratio of the good intent of the deed.

First of all I want proof that the supply side of the water system HAS NO LEAKS! Virtually all
cities anywhere have problems with leaking water mains wasting a lot of pumped water. Older cities have deteriorated (deteriorating) pipes and so does Prince George.

City Hall has NO idea how much of the water actually reaches the consumer. I want to see charts that record total water pumped and supplied to the system for daily 24 hour periods for a whole year.

If every house in Prince George had a water meter and all the readings would be totalled up there would be red faces at city hall and the hunt for leaking water mains would begin and the accusations of "highest water usage" in the known civilized world would finally stop.

Come with proper facts and not wild guesses if you want to be taken seriously, City Hall!

Diplomat has a good point. However, the methods of finding water leaks in a municipal distribution system are a bit more sophisticated than described. We do not have to go to the expense of adding water meters and putting an adminstrative process in place for that as well as additional maintenance operators to keep the metering system functioning properly.

Look at this case in Newfoundland.

http://www.baumpub.com/publications/cep/cep_features/cep_0604_f2.htm

Reminds me of working during the summers while a student finding leaks in underground communication cables which were getting chewed by groundhogs who seemed to like the plastic conduits. It used air pressure differentials between electronic monitors located along the line. If we interpolated the data properly, we had little digging to do to find the leak, if not, then we had more to do in 80F+ temperatures.

Ah, the memories of a life of leisure. Similar to treeplanting today, I suppose .......

Call it what you will but it is still a tax. Taxes have risen every year and the city still does not get it. Act like a business and get your expenses in order long before coming to the tax payer again.

Fire department pumper trucks gonna have meters on them? If your house burns down, you pay fer the water? Would work fer me.

Canfors two pulp mills on the pulp mill road take in approx 10 Million gallons of water per day and run it through their system, a large portion of this water is returned to the river somewhat polluted, somewhat like the portion of water used by residences and then returned to the river somewhat polluted.

The difference is that the pulp mills are not on City water and therefore once they have put in the infrastructure they get their water for free. Once you add the water used by Northwood Pulp from the Fraser River, I suggest that these mills use more water in one day that the whole city. (Untreated of course) Perhaps the City should take over the water to the pulp mills and put them on a meter. ((Fat chance))

All these hair brained ideas come out of City Hall because it is absolutely essential that they continue to come up with ideas to spend our money, or they would have to give us a tax decrease and they would have to get rid of a bunch of people who would no longer be necessary.

>However, the methods of finding water leaks in a municipal distribution system are a bit more sophisticated than described. <

If it has any aspects of "sophistication" to it the people at City Hall won't touch it!

Thanks for the website about Mount Pearl and its leaking water pipes! Great stuff! Ordinarily I would be tempted to pass it on to the councilors but I won't bother because only Skakun will show any interest in it anyways.

The Mayor? Too busy cutting ribbons.

"Prior to conducting the water leakage reduction study, the City of Mount Pearl had a total system input volume of 7.5 million M3 per year, with a total authorized consumption of 3.63 million M3 of water per year and total water losses of 4.38 million M3 per year." (from the site you pointed out above).

Prince George's water system may be suffering similar losses - but it is far easier to simply trod on as before and label the citizens to be water wasters of a monumental degree!

Time for a wholesale change.

My neighbor in the Hart area had a water leak just on their side of the property line from the city. His house was the last on the city water system, mine was second last. My water was so bad I could fill a cup and let it sit for a minute and there would be so much sediment you could no longer see the bottom of the glass. His water leak actually helped to clean up my water so I was good with it.

The city refused to touch the water leak for over a year, and finally my neighbor paid $20,000 to have a back-ho come and dig up his water line and fix the leak. The neighbor was a professor at the university, and sold his house and moved after his experience with city hall.

For myself I had a nice little pond in the front corner of my yard that had a stream flowing from it winding through my yard to the valley below. The stream and pond never froze throughout the winter and attracted lots of birds, small animals as well as my dog for freash water throughout the winter.

The amount of water coming down this stream was incredible for such a small water line, and it never made sense to me when the city talked of water meters and yet they could care less about this waste of water.