If there’s one thing environmentalists hate more than the oil sands and Stephen Harper, it’s wasted water.
As abundant as water is in the Flin Flon region, environmentalists loathe the idea that residents bear no penalty for saturating their lawns each summer day or filling up the bathtub for every family member who needs a scrub.
I personally think we’ve got bigger fish to fry, but I can appreciate why the City of Flin Flon’s water policies drive our more earth-conscious friends batty.
In a nutshell, the city actually encourages mass consumption, if not overconsumption, of water. And as bizarre as it may sound, there is a good reason for it.
Before we get to that, let’s examine the city’s rather unusual record on water regulation.
In 2007, city council voted to mandate water meters for every home in Flin Flon. All residents would shift away from a flat, use-as-you-will-and-pay-the-same fee and begin paying based on actual consumption.
So serious was the city about this plan that in 2008 it budgeted $1.6 million to buy and install meters. No meters appeared, so in 2009 the city again set aside big bucks – $2 million this time. Again, no meters – and no mention of them in any city budget since.
Not only did the meters never happen, the public learned prior to the 2007 motion that a resident wishing to install a meter on his or her own volition would not be allowed to do so.
The minority of homeowners who had already installed meters prior to the ban were allowed to keep them, but no new meters would be permitted.
That ban remains in effect today and has become somewhat controversial as residents in one- and two-person homes search for cost savings as their utility bills soar.
“They’re wanting me to pay the same as what a person who uses twice as much [water] as me pays,” Brian Taylor, a single resident who wants a meter, told The Reminder in 2013.
In 2014, another resident emailed me to ask whether the city has the legal authority to bar people from putting in water meters.
I’m no lawyer, of course. I just told her that while I doubted the law would stop her from installing a meter on her property, I was pretty sure the city retained the right to bill her as it deemed fit – under the flat rate.
I sympathize with both her and Mr. Taylor. During the previous administration at city hall, the mantra was “pay for what you use” as neighbouring communities and cottage subdivisions were asked to deposit dollars into Flin Flon coffers.
So why, when it comes to water, are Flin Flonners denied the right to pay only for what they use?
It’s not as though the meter ban is arbitrary. The city says its water system must survive on its own revenues, as dollars from other sources cannot be thrown into the mix.
Right now, with the strong majority of residents paying the meterless flat rate, the city has a good idea of how much money the system will generate each year.
If residents rush to install meters, however, those calculations would be thrown off. The city could be left scrambling over how to set meter-based rates that guarantee the same amount of revenue as the flat rate.
And so we are left with a peculiar system that encourages consumption because residents pay the same whether they use eight litres of water a week or 800 litres. It is, as one environmentally minded citizen told me, the exact opposite of what many other communities are doing.
Again, whether the city’s system is “good” or “bad” depends on how much importance you place on all of that presumably frivolous H2O being pumped from the vast depths of Cliff Lake, the source of our drinking water.
When the city was planning to spend $2 million on meters for everyone, I felt the money could have been much better spent in other areas. I still feel that way.
But do I understand why environmentalists and one- and two-person homes oppose the meter ban? You bet.
Local Angle is published Fridays.
