We've an utterly insane situation here in Ireland, speaking of mad capped environmental legislation.
Residential (domestic) fresh water has always been provided here as a service by your local city/county council and paid for out of general taxation. The only water users who were metered were businesses.
However, after our financial crisis one of the T&Cs imposed by the "Troika" (EU, IMF and European Central Bank) was that we introduce water metering for residential users. Apparently they seemed to think that the main cause of our housing bubble and banking credit bubble was that we had enjoyed FAR too much 'free' water. So, that had to be fixed immediately under their plan to override Irish democracy and micromanage the economy from Frankfurt (ECB HQ) and Berlin (Angela Merkel's office) (not even Brussels).
This was slipped in as a 'rider' to the bail out basically forcing us to do things that were nothing whatsoever to do with banking or financial issues.
(At one stage the German Bundestag knew our budget before our own parliamentarians did!)
Now, bear in mind that Ireland has a relatively small population 4.6 million, relatively low population density and the climate ensures 'abundant' rainfall. Our only 'water shortage' issues are that Dublin City expanded quite substantially during the 2000s and the reservoir infrastructure needs to catch up which is nothing to do with the availability of fresh water form an environmental point of view.
We've now exited the bailout and are no longer subject to all of these things apparently but we're still allegedly bound by the conditions of this deal which include implementation of water metering.
Slight problems:
1) Irish homes and plumbing was never designed with water metering in mind. This means there's no clear place to put the meter other than in the street outside. There are all sorts of practical plumbing issues with gaining access to the incoming mains (buried under driveways, gardens, external stopcocks may be difficult to locate. You're also talking about homes that may be anything from new to over 300 years old. This isn't all just slotting water meters into suburban driveways.
2) While we don't have that many apartment buildings (less than 3% of the population lives in apartments) none have the cold water supply systems divided up on a per apartment basis. So they're actually impossible to meter.
Here's what they're doing:
1) Create a state-owned utility company "Irish Water"
2) Irish water initially subcontracts its work to the existing city/county councils. (Doubling the bureaucratic layers).
3) Install a water meter in the sidewalk/pavement outside every single home in Ireland. In some cases (not that many) this is easy and cheap, in most it's involving groundworks outside the house and plumbers are encountering all sorts of old cast iron pipes that suddenly give way when disturbed. The result has been a project that's probably going to spiral out of all cost control and is already going to cost the new utility about €1.5 billion (almost US$2 billion).
4) Because no water metering was in place, leaks underground need to be repaired. Irish Water's agreed to do a 'first leak repair' for home owners. So, that could cost any amount of money really as nobody knows what they're going to unearth as the months go on. If you've subsequent leaks after that, you've got to repair them at your own cost or pay per L for the any water lost.
So, basically this 'ambitious' (I use that term for comic value) project could end up costing us billions because we're being forced to implement an environmental directive by blackmail pretty much by adding it as a rider to the terms and conditions of a bailout for the banking sector!?!
Not only that, but it's created so much political hot water (pardon the pun) that I suspect it could even bring the government down before the end of its term.
Irish Water produced proposed costs per L which would make Ireland's domestic water amongst the most expensive in the world.
€4.88 (6.32 US$) per cubic metre (1000L / 264 US gallons)
....
I'm in favour of environmental protections and incentives to reduce, but this is really bordering on just gouging us for tax revenue.
Then there's also the risk that this new state-owned utility company may just get sold off to some European commercial company.
I'm actually starting to suspect that the EU was heavily lobbied by water utilities to force this through.
...
This month we get a registration pack where we're supposed to provide the PPSN (Personal Public Service) (like social security number) of every person living in the house to ensure we get our 'water allowances' which is the free usage allowances.
I suspect a huge number of these will be not filled in and never returned.
I wouldn't have minded paying a flat fee for water usage, or even a reasonable water charge on a metered basis where meters were introduced bit by bit as new plumbing went in, but this whole setup is just absolutely crazy.
I have no idea why it's being driven so hard or who is driving it because the politicians all know they'll be voted out of office in 2016 over it, if the Government doesn't cave in or collapse entirely before then.
Opinion polling with 76% of the population saying the water charges are unfair and strong rises for parties with 'Euro critical' (not quite Euro sceptic) stances, particularly Sinn Fein as a result of it.
I think the EU needs to be damn careful at the moment, they're pushing too far into areas of domestic policy and far too aggressively and it could just end up causing a major backlash and rise of all sorts of anti-EU parties on the left and right that will derail all the good aspects of the EU as well as the more annoying ones like this.
Residential (domestic) fresh water has always been provided here as a service by your local city/county council and paid for out of general taxation. The only water users who were metered were businesses.
However, after our financial crisis one of the T&Cs imposed by the "Troika" (EU, IMF and European Central Bank) was that we introduce water metering for residential users. Apparently they seemed to think that the main cause of our housing bubble and banking credit bubble was that we had enjoyed FAR too much 'free' water. So, that had to be fixed immediately under their plan to override Irish democracy and micromanage the economy from Frankfurt (ECB HQ) and Berlin (Angela Merkel's office) (not even Brussels).
This was slipped in as a 'rider' to the bail out basically forcing us to do things that were nothing whatsoever to do with banking or financial issues.
(At one stage the German Bundestag knew our budget before our own parliamentarians did!)
Now, bear in mind that Ireland has a relatively small population 4.6 million, relatively low population density and the climate ensures 'abundant' rainfall. Our only 'water shortage' issues are that Dublin City expanded quite substantially during the 2000s and the reservoir infrastructure needs to catch up which is nothing to do with the availability of fresh water form an environmental point of view.
We've now exited the bailout and are no longer subject to all of these things apparently but we're still allegedly bound by the conditions of this deal which include implementation of water metering.
Slight problems:
1) Irish homes and plumbing was never designed with water metering in mind. This means there's no clear place to put the meter other than in the street outside. There are all sorts of practical plumbing issues with gaining access to the incoming mains (buried under driveways, gardens, external stopcocks may be difficult to locate. You're also talking about homes that may be anything from new to over 300 years old. This isn't all just slotting water meters into suburban driveways.
2) While we don't have that many apartment buildings (less than 3% of the population lives in apartments) none have the cold water supply systems divided up on a per apartment basis. So they're actually impossible to meter.
Here's what they're doing:
1) Create a state-owned utility company "Irish Water"
2) Irish water initially subcontracts its work to the existing city/county councils. (Doubling the bureaucratic layers).
3) Install a water meter in the sidewalk/pavement outside every single home in Ireland. In some cases (not that many) this is easy and cheap, in most it's involving groundworks outside the house and plumbers are encountering all sorts of old cast iron pipes that suddenly give way when disturbed. The result has been a project that's probably going to spiral out of all cost control and is already going to cost the new utility about €1.5 billion (almost US$2 billion).
4) Because no water metering was in place, leaks underground need to be repaired. Irish Water's agreed to do a 'first leak repair' for home owners. So, that could cost any amount of money really as nobody knows what they're going to unearth as the months go on. If you've subsequent leaks after that, you've got to repair them at your own cost or pay per L for the any water lost.
So, basically this 'ambitious' (I use that term for comic value) project could end up costing us billions because we're being forced to implement an environmental directive by blackmail pretty much by adding it as a rider to the terms and conditions of a bailout for the banking sector!?!
Not only that, but it's created so much political hot water (pardon the pun) that I suspect it could even bring the government down before the end of its term.
Irish Water produced proposed costs per L which would make Ireland's domestic water amongst the most expensive in the world.
€4.88 (6.32 US$) per cubic metre (1000L / 264 US gallons)
....
I'm in favour of environmental protections and incentives to reduce, but this is really bordering on just gouging us for tax revenue.
Then there's also the risk that this new state-owned utility company may just get sold off to some European commercial company.
I'm actually starting to suspect that the EU was heavily lobbied by water utilities to force this through.
...
This month we get a registration pack where we're supposed to provide the PPSN (Personal Public Service) (like social security number) of every person living in the house to ensure we get our 'water allowances' which is the free usage allowances.
I suspect a huge number of these will be not filled in and never returned.
I wouldn't have minded paying a flat fee for water usage, or even a reasonable water charge on a metered basis where meters were introduced bit by bit as new plumbing went in, but this whole setup is just absolutely crazy.
I have no idea why it's being driven so hard or who is driving it because the politicians all know they'll be voted out of office in 2016 over it, if the Government doesn't cave in or collapse entirely before then.
Opinion polling with 76% of the population saying the water charges are unfair and strong rises for parties with 'Euro critical' (not quite Euro sceptic) stances, particularly Sinn Fein as a result of it.
I think the EU needs to be damn careful at the moment, they're pushing too far into areas of domestic policy and far too aggressively and it could just end up causing a major backlash and rise of all sorts of anti-EU parties on the left and right that will derail all the good aspects of the EU as well as the more annoying ones like this.
