whilst perusing the news i noticed an article on INFRASTRUCTURE PROBLEMS WITH WATER SYSTEMS in the land of plenty, the united states.
i read somewhere that us humans have a lot of water in our shells and we need a lot of the stuff to maintain and cleanse our shells so i guess this might be a problem that should be addressed. the west coast of british columbia is often referred to as a rain forest. we have lots of trees and it rains a lot so the label of rain forest isn't far off the mark.
we take our water very serious up here. years ago when the free trade agreement with the united states was being hammered out the main concern of ordinary working canadians was water. for as long as i can remember people have always worried about "those fucking americans want our water." we didn't really worry about jobs and commerce it was the water we wanted to protect.
i don't think we have a water infrastructure problem in the lower mainland of british columbia because we're always building something to keep care of the water and it ain't cheap. i pay about $1150 per year for water and sewage. it's probably a good deal because we have beautifully fresh drinkable water coming out of our taps. it's a mystery to me why people around here pay for bottled water. i guess they have more money than brains. right now we're drilling a hole in a local mountain to keep up with the demand for water and we're always ripping up roads to put in new water pipes. funny thing, people never complain about the cost of maintaining our water infrastructure. raise the gas tax 2 cents per litre and all hell will break loose but raise water rates a few hundred bucks and nobody bats an eyelash.
so here's my question, what do you pay for your water and what is the quality? do you drink tap water and can your kids turn on the outside tap on a hot day and drink water out of the garden hose. would the tea party agree to a tax that would be directed towards maintaining your water supply?
i love you sons of bitches.
64 comments:
We don't pay much, around £300 per year - and the quality is pure and drinkable straight from the tap (or hose, come to that), but we ARE on a tiny island where it rains half the year! We have more sheep and cattle than people, with only a pop.of 70,000, and being a tax exile, it's pretty cash rich compared to most governments, which means most things are substisised. Besides, the place is covered in fresh streams and waterfalls, all free for the drinking (just ask my dog).
We don't pay much for water at all. But here in Oregon it rains a lot. Our bill for water and sewer is $35.00 a month or $420.00 per year.
Our water is good and tasty right from the tap! We fill our own water bottles (the steel kind) to keep for take-out. We use a fridge reservoir to chill it for home drinking.
But there are places here where water does not taste good... Portland has icky tasting water.
I had to laugh at the idea of Canadians fearing that we would take their water... we fear that California will! In fact, we have had to sell them water in recent years. And power too for that matter.
We pay about $450 a year for water, including the summer months when we're irrigating. Our beach water used to be undrinkably sulfurous, but about twenty years ago, they fixed that somehow. We drink tap water or tap water filtered through a doohickey on the refrigerator. And I agree, bottled water is nuts. If I'm caught out somewhere where there's no water fountain and I have to buy it, I save the bottles and refill them at home.
Would the tea party agree on a water infrastructure tax? No. They wouldn't agree on a tax on squat, if it was taxable. Nothing marked revenues, nothing marked tax, nothing whatsoever that brings money IN, as if all you have to do to be solvent is refuse to spend anything. They think a government works like a household, but that solution wouldn't even work in a household.
I'm not despairing, today, though. Wall Street, the bankers, the large corporations, republicans, democrats, and independents are all about pukey sick of those guys now that they've made sure we all pay more interest on loans.
Thank you for asking, though. That's real perlite.
shrinky - that's less than $500 of our dollars. sounds like you're living in shangri la.
silly - i'm glad those nogoodnik californians are after your water not ours but on the other hand we eat a lot of produce from california so i guess it would only be fair to send a few litres their way.
nance - yup, perlite are us.
i think the tea party is open to a tax on homosexuals.
I don't live in the USA, but if I did I would get all the moisture I needed from fresh watermelon. I don't think Shrinky's figure is comparable with yours, because she probably pays for her sewage from local or national taxes.
good point gb. years ago water and sewage were part of our property tax bill but they split them up to make the bill seem smaller.
the second oldest trick in the book.
I live in an Appalachian rain forest, out of city limits, so I've never paid anything for water or sewer. Our house water tasted great until lightning hit our well, then it became ironized (no, not ionized), but we put a deironing system in and its back to excellent quality.
Tea party would be happy to let the roads completely crumble as long as they save enough on taxes to buy themselves a Unimog to haul all their guns and bullion around on the dirt roads between the Walmart and their compound.
I say that although I confess that I have a soft spot for the Unimog as well as the original Tea partiers like Ron Paul and Karl Denninger... but neither of them gets their money or marching orders from the Koch clan, so they don’t make headlines like that airhead Michele Bachman. So it goes.
As for water, you have managed to touch a raw nerve there for me, brother. After months of complaining to our provider about low and inconsistent water pressure, they finally arrived to repair the well head and rework the entire neighborhood’s meters. They fixed the pressure! Unfortunately the new and improved pressure was sufficient to bust a leak in my water line and flood my yard.
I’ve just spent three sweaty hours digging to locate the leak only to determine that it must be right under a beautiful and sizable tree, which happens to be within striking distance of my master bedroom. Yeah.
So now I’m contemplating the relative virtues of calling a tree guy and then digging up a stump, or simply hiring a plumber to run a new water line for me. Given that this has happened once before already (my house is around 40 yrs old), I’m leaning towards just replacing the line and skipping yet another vacation to pay for it. Plumbers ain't cheap.
Oh the joys of home ownership. And this is right on top of a week where I was induced to skip a vacation and work the better part of 80 hours to rescue a client that was desperado. Somebody just shoot me.
Thanks for bringing it up, Billy. You’ve really put a cherry on top of my cupcake of a week. This isn't the package you sent me, is it?
Actually I think I misrepresented our water a bit. As long as we stay under a certain usage level, which I don't know... we only pay $35 a month for both water and sewer. But go a cup of water over the limit... and your whole amount of use is figured at a by the gallon price that can easily tripple your cost. We don't waste water here, so we don't worry about it. I even use what we don't drink in the bottles we fill to water my plants. Every little cup of water counts!
bob - sounds excellent but you must have to do some work to maintain the system?
thimscool - neil young says rust never sleeps, i say water never sleeps. plumbing is one of the few things i never look for a bargain price. i'll bet billy cook could fix the problem.
the more i read about those tea party loonies the more i scratch my head. you must have a lot of disenfranchised people for the tea party to feed off.
silly - our politicians keep talking about metered water rates but so far they haven't done anything about it. when i see everyone watering their lawns it makes me wish they'd hurry up and put in meters.
thims!!!!!!
big news. i know your busy with water problems and my little computer adventure doesn't amount to a hill of beans but the son of a bitch started working again. here's what happened.
i turned it on just for the hell of it and the usual happened, the lights came on but nothing on the monitor. after a few minutes i gave up and decided to turn it off. by accident i didn't push the on/off button all the way in, just a light touch and the son of a bitch came to life.
i guess it just needed a loving touch. it must be female computer, tempermental and needs to be loved and told how important she is!
"those fucking americans want our water."
They goddamn sure do, they're greedy fuckers so stop shitting in it, hehehe.
Um, I don't have a water and sewer bill, I'm a bum.
Really, no shit...
Tea party would be happy to let the roads completely crumble as long as they save enough on taxes to buy themselves a Unimog to haul all their guns and bullion around on the dirt roads between the Walmart and their compound.
Thimscool never fails to amaze me with his knowledge at his age, I never would have thought that he would know what a Unimog is.
was the unimog reference implying that the tea party gang are a bunch of nazis?
i guess it just needed a loving touch. it must be female computer,
All things mechanical are female.
was the unimog reference implying that the tea party gang are a bunch of nazis?
I don't think so, a unimog is just a unimog.
Okay, it's of a german design but what in the fuck has that got to do with anything?
We americans invent a hell of a lot nasty shit also (the unimog is not a nasty machine, just very useful). And if you don't stay nice we'll come after you with it..
*sigh*
it. Plumbers ain't cheap.
Neither are geeks. :-)
Stop whining, you make great money.
well billy, we'll have to wait for thimscool to tell us if there was a nazi connection to the tea party with the unimog reference.
junk yard jim has a unimog, only one I've ever seen, but he doesn't bother himself with politics, just does his own thing.
We can’t change anything about politics and the way our countries are going, especially with our votes, the best we can hope for is to keep our own lives in order and hope they don’t effect us too much. All in all I would say that most of us are doing okay, better than many anyway. But we sure like to whine a lot.
My biggest bill, at least in the winter, is my electric bill, but I can't make it as cheap as I can buy it off the grid, or I would.
Water and sewage disposal is free if you do it right, so I got that going for me also.
Shit in a portapotty, empty portapotty in a public restroom, works for me, hahaha
"Shit in a portapotty, empty portapotty in a public restroom, works for me, hahaha"
i don't know billy, that's tossing a little batting practice for leslie if she's paying attention.
Fuck Leslie...
Put hard times on her and she would cry like a baby, where I would just settle down and do what I need to do to keep trucking along.
Tosses off blanket, starts campfire for coffee, "It's a fine fucking day, gets go kick it in the ass."
And I do okay, Helen insists on paying for all the food we use here, sees it as a way she can repay me for the things I do for her. And she pays for our meals when we eat out.
And they'll feed me anything I want out in the boondocks, and wash the dishes to boot, I don't even take food out there anymore. And I drink some of their beer also.
I'm a lucky son of a bitch.
I found the leak... had to dig around some roots, but not too bad. Now they can patch it.
I also dug up the line next to the meter so they can put a pressure reducer there and hopefully that will avoid trouble in the future.
Total estimated cost: $300, plus about 7 hours of my digging.
It was gonna be $2650 to run a new line. So that means that I just made over $300/hr to dig holes.
I'm in the wrong business. That's almost three time what I charge for IT solutions.
Billy, if you want to double down and invest in my new ditch digging business, I'll give you a sweetheart deal on the initial stock issue.
Hey, do I get to run the ditch digger? It's fun to rip up underground lines and fiber optic cables. Must be, they are doing it all the time.
When they put the sewer line up Bayveiw last year they ripped out a big mess of phone wires, it took three men half a day to fix that mess.
I think our water is about $600 a year. It is very good, no fluoride and it tastes good. I drink tap water, no BPA like bottled water.
I drank some tap water in Norman, Ok the other day, terrible. There's comes from Lake Thunderbird, the lake is always brown, the locals call it Lake Dirtybird.
The union dudes that install the water and sewer lines around here make over 30 bucks an hour and still whine they aren't paid enough.
They just wish they could make $300/hr digging ditches like I do.
Who can blame them?
This is sure a goofy planet, at a business meeting one day a man in the building trades said that in the future it's going to cost you four hundred dollars an hour for a carpenter.
Helen's water pipe was put in the ground back in the 40's and really should be replaced, the first water is always rusty. I figure that the new plastic pipe and fittings would cost me around a hundred bucks to go the 80 feet, but she won't let me replace it.
She's hoping that pipe out lives her.
Put hard times on her and she would cry like a baby, where I would just settle down and do what I need to do to keep trucking along.
You are out of your fucking mind. You know nothing about me, asshole. Once again, I've said nothing, yet I'm still the center of your comment diarrhea universe.
Do I seem like someone who "cries like a baby"? Really? You're dumber than I thought.
Fuck you, bitch, don't want to know you, you're a fucking spoiled bitch.
Clearly you do. Clearly you are completely obsessed with me, dream about me, want to spank me and make me call you Daddy.
Ain't happening. Even from across the country I can smell your rotted beer breath and old man pants. You be better off trying to get Helen to let you lay some pipe.
You wouldn't make a pimple on Helen's ass, she is a super neat country gal and if she was younger I'd dig through a mile of her shit just to kiss her tits.
I wouldn't even cross the street to talk to you, bitch.
Harry wants her, he likes noisy bitches like her. She should go suck his dick.
You should try match.com
Hi, I'm Billy B. Cook. I like moonlit walks on the beach, driving around with day-old poop, and calling women bitches and whores. I've only had sex with plastic since 1972.
We're exceeding our comment limit, bitch. Don't worry, I'll never call you a whore, I like whores.
I haven't insulted you. I merely speak the truth.
Oh wait. Let's see if we can incorporate this into your online dating profile. Perhaps a poetry section...? Tighten it up a bit and it might make a nice fecal-themed haiku header.
...and if she was younger I'd dig through a mile of her shit just to kiss her tits...
Pig. Please die.
Pig. Please die.
Fuck you, cunt...
Time for me to head out to the boondocks.
*poof*
Billy-- in 34 years the only maintenance I've ever done is replace the lightning struck pump. Around $700.
Ha! I thought this was a new post. Despite that, I found the comments made after my last visit interesting to say the least.
We don't water our lawn. It turns somewhat golden, but not ugly, before the rain revives it. It requires less mowing that way, which also saves a bit of gas and effort.
The trend here is to have little unusually shaped spots of perfect lawn surrounded by bark bits, with perfect edges. The people who like this water constantly and generally speaking too much for the size of the lawn.
I just don't get it. It really does not look that nice. We have mostly bark bits with low water required plants. Looks nice, but doesn't hog water.
thims - was the unimog reference for the tea party a link to nazis?
as judge smails said to danny in caddyshack, "the world needs ditchdiggers too danny"
congrats on saving the family vacation.
billy and leslie - i liked the fecal-themed haiku header comment. billy you're going have to pick up your game.
tex - holy christ. i forgot all about flouride in our water. i'll have to look into that. shades of dr strangelove.
bob - $700 in 34 years! a renaissance man can save lots of money.
silly - the only area i water heavily is where ruby pees. but i still have lots of burnt out patches.
You know, the parallels between the Tea Party (as it is currently formulated) and the Nazis are a little thin.
True that they both arose as a populist movement in opposition to the corrupt status quo, but the Nazis were socialists with a strong centralized leadership whereas the TP is a motley crew of malcontents that just want to be left alone, for the most part.
Also, there really isn't much similarity to 2011 America and Germany in the early 30's. Ask again in a few years after the dollar collapses.
That reminds me of a knock knock joke:
Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Spamhike!
Spamhike who?
Gelatinous mould.
See it wiggle and jiggle.
Angioplasty.
for a while it looked like the euro might become the default currency but it's in the crapper and the chinese are too busy keeping the yuan low for exports so it's hard to pick a replacement for the good old greenback.
historically countries inflate their way out of huge debts. are your fellow citizens ready for financial armageddon?
gold standard anyone?
I'm ready... mostly.
Gold is an inadequate standard by any reasonable measure, and would only ensure that the vast majority of humans remain poor. There are perhaps 10 billion ounces of gold in the world, which would make for pretty dismal per-capita wealth at today's exchange rate, and a completely unworkable form of currency if it were traded directly. That will get worse as the population grows.
We need a new concept for money that depends on population rather than allowing it to be created willy nilly by central banks and greedy politicians.
let's go with the gold bullion standard where the country has to be ready to exchange gold for currency if the holder demands it.
you might be too young to remember when it was illegal for common folk to hold gold.
hugo chavez is one step ahead of the game by announcing that he's going to nationalize all the venezuelan gold mines.
god bless hugo!
i've enabled comment verification temporarily due to some feckin chinaman bombarding me with spam comments. blogger doesn't publish them but they clog up my email account.
"I don't drink water, fish shit in it...They also fuck in it!" - W. C. Fields
Seriously though, even in Canadian money Billy, you're getting ass-raped. I pay a little less than $400/year for the stuff, and use a Brita tank to filter what I drink (although nobody bitches about what comes from the tap).
I think Ottawa is "double dipping" yo ass: Charging you outrageously for what you got plenty of, then selling the surplus to US yanks.
ted - love old w.c.
the canadian $ has been above yours for a while now. it's not the feds that charge us for water, it's the regional districts. we have a federal gov, provincial gov and city govs but that wasn't enough. now regional districts are popping up everywhere.
we're getting governed to death.
I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world -- no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.
-- Woodrow Wilson 1919
Holy cannoli. You got quite the comments on this topic BP. I am good with tap water but Mrs. Shife uses bottled water. We have one of those systems with the big gallon jugs that she uses. If we do not end up killing each other I think there is going to be some serious battles over water especially in the US. Large metropolitan areas like Las Vegas and Phoenix have to get their water from somewhere.
billy - did woodrow have a drinking problem?
mr shife - i'm pretty sure there are going to be major water problems during the course of kyle's lifetime.
billy - did woodrow have a drinking problem?
I don't know, but booze can free the mind and give a man some good insights.
and a pounding headache the next day.
Well geez, don't drink that much.
He said to her when she told him that he was drunk, "I'll have a hangover in the morning, but you'll still be ugly." - Churchill.
I just got my water bill, $100 this month. Good drinkable stuff, but I think beer is cheaper so I'm gonna stick with that.
We're about to get a helluvalotta water if Irene has her way with us... after the earthquake today I'm beginning to wonder if maybe god was for serious.
we have a big water problem in texas..we have none..no rain..everything is drying up..we're fucked
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