Water charges revisited?

Johnny Dogs wrote: »

I see we've gone full circle, and the wasting water accusations are in full flight again

Yawn.

Anyone rejoicing that they are free to use water in excess of 213klpa is wasting water. Pure and simple.

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I'm sorry - what section allows for prosecution again?

I'm not saying there is or isn't such a section, I'm just wondering if you have any clue what you're talking about or whether this is some kind of idk what?

I really could not be bothered reading back through some of the scribblings here on what is essentially the flogging of a dead horse by pro water charges supporters, but was it not you who made such a big issue of these new proposed excessive use charges being backed by law ?
If it was, then to me a law without penalties or prosecution for flouting such proposed penalties hardly seems credible, so perhaps you could inform us as to what these are or do you not know.
Back to the water to domestic households being reduced to a trickle perhaps ?


As to that figure of 213,000 and January 1st. 2019, I was well aware of it, but were you not being somewhat disingenuous on both.



On the 213,000 liters. That figure represents 600 liter daily for the average household, (well in excess of the previous Irish Water allowance), with an addition of 25,000 liters per annum for each person in households over the average occupancy.
On January 1st. 2019. Excessive use charges will not begin until January 1st. 2019 "at the earliest" while bills for excess use charges will not be issued until July 1st. 2019 "at the earliest"

Edward M wrote: »

Absolutely agree.
We heard so much about the abundance of fresh water here at the time of the protests that you'd think we were living in a rainforest.
The harvesting and storage is an immense issue and needs to be sorted as soon as possible.
The Shannon pipeline of course is being mooted as the big saviour now, but even it is not a definitive answer.
So much needed and with a dry spell as we have now, if it became frequent then even that might not fulfill all the needs.
The effect that a low level Shannon could have on the tourism industry in areas like athlone, carrick on Shannon and the towns and counties around the river could have, might well be devastating if prolonged pumping were to take place.
There are major issues with water supply that haven't been thought out thoroughly at all.

There is also the small matter of spending 1.3 Billion Euro, (initial budgeted price and we all know what that means), to pump water from the Shannon to have 50% of it leaking through mains in Dublin.


Here`s an off the wall idea.
Take that 1.3 Billion Euro and use it to fix the leaks.
Have we not wasted enough money already by burying it underground.

charlie14 wrote: »

There is also the small matter of spending 1.3 Billion Euro, (initial budgeted price and we all know what that means), to pump water from the Shannon to have 50% of it leaking through mains in Dublin.


Here`s an off the wall idea.
Take that 1.3 Billion Euro and use it to fix the leaks.
Have we not wasted enough money already by burying it underground.

Rennaws wrote: »

Let's not forget that while this may have some impact, it's largely negated by the fact that a third of households can't be metered and therefore will aparrently have no incentive to conserve water.



http://www.dublincity.ie/main-menu-services-water-waste-and-environment-your-drinking-water-managing-our-water-supplies/how

And yet in Dublin alone we managed to reduce water leakage from 43% down to 29% through investment in the infrastructure from 97 to 09.

I don't know about the rest of the country but we also have significant investment going into our own supply despite not paying charges.

I thought none of this was possible without Dinny's meters and a bloated quango for Enda's cronies..

Rennaws has the leakage down to 29%, not your 50%.

That means water from the Shannon or demand management through metering are the only way forward.

charlie14 wrote: »

Water meters are underground doing nothing and never likely to. A waste of money that could and should have been used to repair leaks.

They are measuring water used actually....which is what they were designed to do.

charlie14 wrote: »

I do not remember if you were on the mega threads discussion on this subject, but as someone who was, I can assure you nothing about leaks escaped me. Especially that water meters are as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike when it comes to detecting where 50% of treated water leaks are, the mains.

Even taking your figures, which I dont agree with, doesnt that, by definition, mean that 50% of the leaks are on the customers side?
You are ok that we dont fix them I take it?

charlie14 wrote: »

I have always paid for water through general taxation, but you seem to be under the misconception that water charges were contributing anything to water or waste water services.

No, your tax has merely *contributed* to keeping the lights on for our water system. Neither you nor anyone else were or indeed are contributing enough tax to cover the costs of delivering water.
How do I know this? Because if you were we wouldnt be leaking 50% of all water.

Rennaws wrote: »

We did.

We won.

There are no charges.

No, you derailed the only vehicle we had in place to solve the problem.
At best you have just forced the government to either increase taxes or divert money away from health or education.
Congratulations.

Johnny Dogs wrote: »

I think there's a great argument to be had here, and it would mainly boil down to whether anyone was paying enough tax/whether that tax has been mismanaged by successive govts including the last one who blew 2billion on Irish water. But whatever.

Divide your 2Bn by each local authority and see how much actual improvement you get. You need a single authority to oversee projects of this magnatude.
Look at ESB or bord gais as examples.

Johnny Dogs wrote: »

See my post about project Ireland 2040. Plenty of money, plenty of time.

2040 is plenty of time to wait to get the water system fixed?

GreeBo wrote: »

They are measuring water used actually....which is what they were designed to do.


Even taking your figures, which I dont agree with, doesnt that, by definition, mean that 50% of the leaks are on the customers side?
You are ok that we dont fix them I take it?


No, your tax has merely *contributed* to keeping the lights on for our water system. Neither you nor anyone else were or indeed are contributing enough tax to cover the costs of delivering water.
How do I know this? Because if you were we wouldnt be leaking 50% of all water.

Domestic water meters were not designed to measure water. They were designed to charge for water. Area metering will measure water usage at a fraction of the cost.


Have you actually even read anything on the percentage of mains leakage compared domestic household side leakage ?
If not then please do so before asking such a silly question again.
It is all well documented here in a previous thread.



I have contributed, as has ever citizen, to the provision of water and waste water services through general taxation, and still do Same as all other State services.
What is it you do not get about that?

dense wrote: »

It's all up in the air, and I certainly couldn't lend my support to water charges with it being such a poorly thought out strategy that it has more holes in it than the network.

A fairly rational sentence which I can totally understand. Sadly undone by what came next....

dense wrote: »

There's an ulterior motive afoot and its got nothing to do with conserving water.

That's tinfoil hat stuff. Water charges make sense, both economically and environmentally. We just have a history in this country of being incapable of implementing large scale projects like this with anything remotely like top class efficiency. We piss away money with badly managed or badly set up infrastructure regularly. We don't need an ulterior motive to mess this stuff up.

There's no reason really, the government could have just stipulated that either homeowners allow Irish Water to install a meter on their property or that they would be financially responsible for doing it themselves, otherwise pay a flat amount - they just didn't do that for whatever reason.

The problem is that some properties have multiple homes situate on one mains - i.e. mains goes onto the property and is then split on the property.

No reason this couldn't work in apartments as well, like electricity (of which I'm sure there must be legislation compelling you to have a meter or face a penalty).

It's just more people overjoyed that the well off are paying for all their freebies unfortunately.

Matt Barrett wrote: »

No, it isn't. I was mentioning how it wasn't a new problem only discovered in 2011. I also mentioned how it was bad housekeeping not to have tackled it decades ago, as it got worse and became a bigger problem. So it does indeed matter.
You carry on with more inaccuracies. We didn't need IW to oversee a combined multi LA overhaul of water infrastructure using contractors. We had/have the Dept. of the Environment and already LA's using contractors for water supply issues before the IW con was dreamt up.
On paying, I always did and continue to do so. Round and round we go...

So it was a bad idea not to fix it decades ago when the incompetent local authorities were in charge of water, but it is also a bad idea to take the responsibility off those incompetent local authorities and give it to a single national utility.

Impeccable logic.