City ponders water tax or other charges
The details aren’t yet clear, but the city is considering the introduction of a water tax or something similar which, I predict, will be pitched as reducing waste, but in fact will be more about revenue.
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Kate
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DeePs 10:53 on 2019-03-22 Permalink
It’s crazy we don’t pay for water in proportion to our usage. Even a fairly low usage fee that escalates according to our consumption would save a lot of water and maybe even ease the strain on our very leaky water distribution system. Strikes me as taking for granted something that is highly valuable in many parts of the rest of the world.
JaneyB 11:18 on 2019-03-22 Permalink
Lots of Cdn cities have a tax on water at the drain as opposed to at the tap. That keeps drinking and cooking protected as free but encourages better toilets and showerheads.
Ian 12:30 on 2019-03-22 Permalink
DeePs there’s no water shortage. We live on an island. What there is is infrastructure costs, and as always the city is trying to figure out how to wring more bucks out of us since the province isn’t helping enough.
Ephraim 21:24 on 2019-03-22 Permalink
We already pay a water tax, it’s on our bill. We would all need to install water meters… at least $1000 per house. This will NOT be popular. And that $1000 is the plumbing cost, even if they give you the meter free. You should see the requirements for it and the space it takes. It needs to be bolted to the wall with supports, etc.
MtlWeb 22:31 on 2019-03-22 Permalink
St. Laurent residents (at least since ’96) pay a water tax based on consumption; 25$ base rate and more if above minimum consumption threshold for year
Bert 23:20 on 2019-03-22 Permalink
How does a “drain” tax differ from a “tap” tax. The water has to go somewhere. Yes, some water, a very small amount may get absorbed and eaten or may evaporate during cooking. If it is a pure (i.e. metered) drain tax then I am sure you will have people throwing waste water, be it gray or black, out the window.
dhomas 09:25 on 2019-03-23 Permalink
I can tell you that the pool owners in my neighbourhood do not dump their pool water into their own drains. It all goes to the sewer on the street. That’s a helluva lot of water that would be missed in a drain tax.
Kevin 11:45 on 2019-03-23 Permalink
I’m with Ephraim: retrofitting meters into duplexes is a big job.
In my gas I cannot get a new gas meter because it would require splitting the line outside my building instead of the exusting inside split.
Water would be the same. They would have to rip out several walls on several floors to figure out the plumbing.
Faiz Imam 12:37 on 2019-03-23 Permalink
So weird. In Brossard we’ve had meters from day 1. The house i’m in was built in the early 70’s.
A teenager comes by once a year with a clipboard to check the number.
The cost is not exorbitant, but I think its good to be accountable. Its in the range of $50 to $80 dollars a year. It’s about 50 cents per cubic meter.
Fun fact: about 50% of Canadian households have water meters: https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/residential-water-use.html
I get that retrofitting is complex, but do new units on the island have meters? at the very least grandfathering everyone and starting going forward is the least we can do.
mare 13:38 on 2019-03-23 Permalink
We pay for our water, but it’s included in the property taxes and it doesn’t matter if we (or our tenants) are frugal or not.
Water meters will be per building I assume, it will be extremely expensive to install separate ones in multiplexes with their spaghetti water pipes. I do some plumbing sometimes and in some buildings in the Plateau and Mile End, that don’t have real basements but just a trench dug out in the bedrock, I could only reach the main valve with great difficulty. Installing water meters there will require major gymnastics.