My wife and I just caught a (1980’s) Cosby episode where Clair reads in the paper that NYC plans to install water meters on residences. What is this? Do you mean NYC never metered water before??? Was it free, or were they charged a flat, monthly fee, or what? - Jinx 
Residences are still not metered, businesses are. I think it’s in the city tax.
No wonder NYC is building that monstrous new viaduct. I wonder how much water is wasted in the city by residential users.
I can distinctly remember learning that the best motivator for buying a $11 toilet repair kit was a $40 usage increase in my water bill one month.
NYC is building a monstrous new viaduct because the old ones haven’t been shut down in nearly a century. God only knows whether they’ve held up well or are on the verge of collapse. Once Water Tunnel No. 3 is operational, Nos. 1 and 2 can be shut down for maintenance. Tunnel No. 3 is one of the largest civil works projects ever undertaken in this country. It was started in the 1970s and is not expected to be finished until 2020. So far it’s ahead of schedule and under budget. 
NYC does not meter water for residential use because we have a lot of it. The Hudon Valley Watershed is one of the greatest achievements of engineering in human history.
Yeah? And, I bet NY doesn’t process the water for the end-user, either! 
In Delaware, we simply smile and say “we like the chemical in our water!”
Say, BWT, your handle reminds me of an old joke. What did the battery say to the potato chip? "I’m Ever-ready, if you’re Freido-lay!
- Jinx
Dang, I blew the joke (previous post above)! But, that’s what “better living through chemistry” is all about… :eek:
- Jinx
Residences are metered these days too.
There may be higher than average waste among endusers of the water supply – I’m just speculating here, not confirming sewalk’s post – but NYC’s water supply is “tighter” than most. What I mean is that its losses are considerably less from source to enduser compared with other municipalities. There is one notable leak in one of the tunnels in the Delaware (I think) branch that the DOE intends to assess and repair using a robotic submersible.
I recently attended a seminar about the NYC water supply, which is where I got most of this information.
Before NYC metered residential water, we paid “water and sewer” charges. The water tax was based on the property width and the number of bathrooms , kitchens etc in the building.
My water’s metered? Next you’ll be telling me that I have to pay for gas, electricity and cable too…
[hijack]
My husband and I lived in a house provided to employees by the correctional institution for which he works. It was only two hundred dollars a month in rent for a three bedroom, one bath house (two stories plus full basement.) For two years, we didn’t have to pay for water or gas-- they came right from the prison’s supply.
Then they installed meters and started charging for gas, and suddenly, the house wasn’t a bargain any more. Our gas bill was at least four hundred dollars every month in the winter! One memorable month it was almost six hundred. And we were still cold! The houses were not insulated.
Well, water was still free, anyway, but you couldn’t drink it because it was nasty. We had bottled water delivered. [/hijack]
For what it’s worth, water is not metered in Norway, either. Nowhere in the country that I know of. Of course, you build a country on a narrow strip of coastline on the windward side of a mountain range, you tend to get a lot of rain, see…
Each municipality decides how it’s going to charge for water, but charging based on the size of the residence is common.
I’ve never had to pay for water or gas in NYC either, but I’ve always had to pay for cable.
I inferred that about NYC from the posts above, too. What the hell kind of crap is that? Some uneducated jerks with 5 little kids living in their 900 square foot house get charged significantly less that just my wife and I in my 1800 square foot house just because of the size difference?
That’s the kind of thing that leads to waste – when something like that happens I’ll leave the water running in the shower just out of spite.
Historically, New York City charged apartment buildings for water and sewer based on frontage (essentially, building size), with no relation to actual usage. About five years ago, they converted to charging based on actual metered usage for the building. Our building’s charges actually went down significantly.
Although the building pays for water and sewer usage as a whole, it is not submetered for individual apartments.
Just so you all know that NYC and Norway aren’t the only places not metering water use, Sacramento (California) also doesn’t meter. IIRC, water and sewer is simply rolled into the property tax as a set amout.
New construction will have meters, but they’re not read. They’re probably required as part of state building code - but the codes don’t require them to actually be used.
Big chunks of Britain are unmetered, too.
An interesting point I remember hearing from one environmental group: although introducing metering would seemingly make people more keen to cut down on wasting water, the opposite was true. The cost wasn’t enough to be a disincentive, and the attitude of ‘I pay for it, so I can use it how I want to’ emerged, which didn’t exist before.