high water users

Whenever we have to conserve water, news outlets love to point out those high-profile names that are using more than their fair share.  ABC Action News published lists of top water users for each area, and stories told by the St. Pete Times, My Fox Tampa Bay and others pointed out that the Don Wallace Palace on Bayshore used the most water in the Tampa Bay area (over 6 million gallons).  (Spokesmen for Wallace say there may be leaky pipes.)

Local media also weren’t shy about calling out George Steinbrenner, developer Al Austin, Bucs co-chair Bryan Glazer, Outback Steakhouse CEO Bill Allen, attorney Arnold Levine, professional wrestler John Cena, and physician Ignacio Armas for high water usage on their residential properties.

Days later, they took a closer look at the list of high-water residential users and noticed that a bunch of model homes were among the top of these lists, too.

(By the way, none of the media outlets (that I could find online, anyway) specifically pointed out the highest business users.  Of the top nine highest commercial users in Temple Terrace, five of them (collectively using more than 22 million gallons over 6 months) are located on Telecom Parkway.  This industrial park off Fletcher and I-75 has the greenest grass around, and always seems to have sprinklers on.)

But it’s not fair to single out these above average water users:

Just because they’re “high irrigators doesn’t automatically translate into they’re breaking the rules,” Tampa Water Department director Brad Baird said.

The problem is that local governments like the City of Tampa refuse to charge them more.  Sure, Tampa charges for water in a tiered system – the more water you use, the higher the cost.  But it’s not really prohibitively so.  The highest tier ($5.09/748 gallons) is currently about 67 cents per hundred gallons.  From a 2007 editorial:

Tampa customers pay $11.55 a month for about 7,480 gallons of water, the average household use. If the mayor’s plan, which will go to council this summer, is adopted, that would increase to $22.61 by 2012.

The rate for the same amount of water in Hillsborough County already is $33.92. In Pinellas, $25.20; Bradenton, $24.83; Venice, $23.80; Pasco, $21.40; and Sarasota, $18.85.

The average American uses between 80 & 100 gallons of water every day (Tampa says 104), and the average residential household uses between 6000 and 7500 gallons each month.  Tampa’s highest tier price begins at 34,400 gallons per month (413,000 gallons/year), enough for a household of eleven to fourteen.

If all local utilities raise that last tier to five cents per gallon, we’ll see how fast Wallace and the others fix their pipes.