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Water Costs Outdistance Revenues Major Capital Expenditures Loom for Canadian Municipalities
July, 2008
By Klaus Reichardt
Canadians should expect to pay more for water in coming years as communities across the country look for revenue to rebuild and expand water infrastructure. Major capital investment is required to maintain, repair and upgrade municipal water supply and sewerage systems over the next 10 years.
At the same time, consumers have historically been undercharged for the full cost of service. In some cases, current water charges cover only about 10% of the cost to deliver this resource.
Escalating water infrastructure needs could necessitate new financing and revenue-gathering instruments to finance future water infrastructure projects and produce reliable annual streams of revenue for water and sewer systems, suggests Harry Kitchen, a Professor in the Department of Economics at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. That might take the form of additional taxes, increased permit and development charges for developers, or higher charges for water usage.
Environment Canada calculates that water consumption occurs in four main areas:
( Residential usage, 52%
( Commercial (offices, schools, health care centres, etc.), 19%
( Industrial facilities, 16%
( Leakage, 13%
Leakage is particularly insidious. A small drip from a single water faucet can waste approximately 3,000 gallons of water per year. One leaky toilet can waste as much as 4,000 gallons of water per year. In the United States, for example, a study from the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission of Maryland found that in jurisdictions where water is charged based on actual usage, nine out of 10 complaints relating to high water bills were the result of leaky toilets.
CONSERVATION IMPACT
A large-scale campaign to repair leaky faucets and toilets, invest in waterless urinal systems and low-flow and dual-flush toilets could help minimize or even defer infrastructure costs, resulting in savings for municipalities, users and taxpayers.
Older faucets without flow restrictors can discharge as much as seven gallons of water per minute. Low-flow faucets can save two to three gallons of water per minute, while low-flow showerheads can reduce water consumption by as much as four gallons per minute.
Some commercial facilities are reducing water usage significantly by converting their urinal systems from conventional water-based units to no-flush or waterless systems. In a US example, an army base in the chronically drought-stricken Monterey Peninsula of California retrofitted men's washrooms with 173 waterless urinals in 2002. This resulted in 11,490 gallons of water saved per day and amounted to an estimated $63,000 [US] in total cost savings.
Dual-control or dual-flush toilets have similarly yielded impressive water saving results. There are also options to retrofit existing toilets with dual-flush technology at a relatively nominal cost.
Canadian municipalities and tax payers will soon have to come to terms with the fact that water infrastructure in many parts of Canada needs upgrading. Ways to fund these projects also need to be developed.
Kitchen argues that municipalities should adopt a demand-management pricing system for water whereby property owners, both residential and commercial, will be charged for water and sewage based on usage. Property owners would likely see their operating costs rise if this practice takes hold.
Klaus Reichardt is managing partner of Waterless Co LLC, manufacturers of the Waterless No-Flush( urinal and other washroom products. For more information, see the web site at www.waterless.com.
Klaus Reichardt is managing partner of Waterless Co LLC, manufacturers of the Waterless No-Flush( urinal and other washroom products. For more information, see the web site at www.waterless.com.
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