Hundreds lose water source in Colorado's poorest county with no notice

Re:Hundreds lose water source in Colorado's poorest county w... by michaelt on Monday August 25, 2025 @11:48AM (#45015157)

Many countries have rural water users subsidised by urban water users, because rural users need 100 times as much pipe buried and maintained per customer, but everyone pays the same rate for water.

Of course, in my country we tolerate that - it's normal for food to flow into urban areas and money to flow out, water pricing is just an obscure element of that.

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Re:Hundreds lose water source in Colorado's poorest county w... by khuey on Monday August 25, 2025 @12:15PM (#45015475)

In this case it seems like it's the reverse. The article claims the "bulk water" customers are responsible for 15% of the system's revenue but consume less than 1% of the water delivered.

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Re:Hundreds lose water source in Colorado's poorest county w... by ajb on Monday August 25, 2025 @11:56AM (#45015223)

These users were not in the piped network. They were driving to a station to collect water in tanks. If anything, that's cheaper to maintain.

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Re:Hundreds lose water source in Colorado's poorest county w... by potato3732842 on Monday August 25, 2025 @11:56AM (#45015234)

Even if it's not "cheaper" it's not the utility's problem what the user's hauling equipment costs.

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Re:Hundreds lose water source in Colorado's poorest county w... by bombcar on Monday August 25, 2025 @12:04PM (#45015340)

I’ve never seen “rural” properties on “city” water unless a pipe happened to be running down the road for an existing development anyway.

Otherwise it’s all wells, sometimes tremendously deep.

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Re:Hundreds lose water source in Colorado's poorest county w... by bluGill on Monday August 25, 2025 @01:05PM (#45016073)

Depends on the area.

I live in iowa - nearly everyone is on rural water because wells don't produce much water. I'm on a well and I can't water my lawn - after an hour my well is empty. My well is about a meter in diameter so that should be a lot stored. it would be $20k to extend the city water pipe to my lot.

i used to live in MN, there I knew farmers on a 5cm well who had no problem watering lawns, and 50 cows from the well.

in colorado where this story is water is less available than iowa. (most farms have a year round creek that could be treated to become drinkable)

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Re:Hundreds lose water source in Colorado's poorest county w... by bombcar on Monday August 25, 2025 @01:58PM (#45016729)

That’s one of the real solutions - we shouldn’t be using potable water for everything. Houses that are plumbed on city water should have two water sources - potable and other.

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Re:Hundreds lose water source in Colorado's poorest county w... by bluGill on Monday August 25, 2025 @04:04PM (#45018339)

that won't help much. Water costs are mostly not in the treatment in general. pipes and pumps are the larger costs for most.

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