I have read [1] (in an admittedly rather dated book) that many states in America use water bills to subsidise farmers.

Long ago, large landowners noticed you can build a big water project with a state bond issue, use 80% of the water for agriculture, then charge homeowners 50x as much as you charge farmers to pay off the bond.

Then a few years later you declare there's a water shortage, ban restaurants from bringing customers water without them asking, and ask voters to support another bond issue.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert

I live about 3 blocks from a friend of mine, I'm in township, he's in the city. His water bill is $120/month, mine is $90 every quarter. We get the same water/sewer from the same place.

How about garbage? We pay about $100 a month for water, sewer, and garbage. We get biweekly pickups and large trash hauled for free once a month. They even take fridges no question.

$200/year for the city.

I don't pay anything extra for it being in the township, it must come out of property taxes or something. But the same company picks up the garbage (Waste Management)

Your neighbor either has huge water needs for watering/a pool or he has a leak/leaky fixture in his supply lines.

$120/month where I live would be 33,200 gallons a month. That’s nearly a gallon a minute.

> I'm in township, he's in the city

They're in different municipalities, so the rates are different. They could easily be using the exact same amount of water each month.

Rates are vastly different depending on where you live, and can greatly increase depending on separate sewer charges. For example, many areas in Massachusetts have separate sewer fees assessed which is primarily paying back bonds for new infrastructure.

So for me, my rates are approximately:

* Water - $6.75 per 100 cubic feet

* Sewer - $14.25 per 100 cubic feet

Or, $21 per 748 gallons, which is $0.028 per gallon, and is ~7.75x as expensive as your water rates. I have about an $18/mo water bill, which is for ~640 gallons a month. 33,200 gallons would cost ~$930 a month.

If you want to be absolutely terrified, lookup the New Orleans Sewage and Water Board. Just an absolute disaster.

Full spectrum from "I haven't received a bill in 3 years" to "I regularly receive $1500 water bills" etc.

Perfect storm of aging/under-funded infrastructure, horrific bloated bureaucracy, on and on.

Shit flows down hill putting New Orleans in a difficult position with regard to sewage as it is below sea level and all the sewage has to be pumped uphill eventually and on the level before that. Pumping sewage is a hard problem involving grinders, strainers, big pipes and big pumps. On top of all the other shit New Orleans has to deal with, it has to deal with a lot of literal shit.

I dont know about Austin, but my Water/Sewer Bill has more than just Water and Sewer on it, it also has Trash, Storm Drainage Maintenance Fee and a couple other multiplicity charges

I would say probably 40% of my Water / Sewer bill has nothing to do with Water or Sewer....

They probably think along the same lines that justify paying for heat in, for example, New England, where water is plentiful.

In NH my water/sewer bill is $350 a quarter at this point. "Plentiful water" doesn't seem to make an impact.

I'm at $450 twice a year. It seems every few weeks I get an email that "a main broke" somewhere and they have to go fix it, and while I appreciate still having water when the power goes out (thanks, gravity!) I don't particularly love having to pay $900 a year - and from the sounds of it, that will go up probably to $1k soon to pay for pipe replacement/repair

22 yrs. experience as a Texas licensed Irrigator here. It's true that the bureaucrats are using a "tiered" system to discourage lawn irrigation. Lawn or landscape irrigation uses tens of thousands of gallons of water each night it comes on, the usage of a house for a whole month in one night.

Those who installed water pumps for the wealthiest living along the lakes in Austin were fantastically profitable before covid19. Water is the new tax in Austin. Water front customers regularly speak of $1000 a month water bills before converting over to lake water . . . which is completely legal, the LCRA charges about $150 a YEAR for over 325,000 gallons of raw lake water.