>> The moral issue is: whether an "unlimited" service sold to an
>> individual can be shared with others. Past history suggests "no." We
>> don't share our unlimited local phone lines with the neighborhood, nor
>> our cable TV. We don't rent one trash pickup in the nbhd and tell
>> everyone to bring their trash on over to one house for pickup. We
>> don't jam everyone possible into a car at the drive-in theatre in an
>> effort to avoid paying for extra cars. In places with unmetered water
>> (like NYC), we don't extend hoses to our neighbors so they don't have
>> to pay for a basic water hookup.
> Minor correction and update:
> NYC _used_ to have a kind-of flat rate service [a]
> for residential water users. You paid a fee based
> on your frontage (size of your property) _and_
> the number of faucets per the plans on file
> with the building department.
> [a] kind of like the kind-of flat
> rates for phone service, I guess...
> Beginning about two decades ago all new residential hookups were
> metered, and bit by bit all the older ones have been switched over as > well.
> As a bit of a side trivia, NYC customers actually pay roughly _twice_
> the metered rate since there's a corresponding sewer fee. There's a
> small group of homeowners who have their own septic tanks and are
> exempt from that -- if they know to apply ...
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Do you mean to tell me septic tanks are
> allowed in New York City? Here in Independence, KS, _everyone_ has to
> be hooked to the sewer, with no exceptions. Outside the city limits
> (that area which is known as 'rural Independence') is a different
> matter. Most of them are _not_ hooked to the sewer, but they are
> hooked to the water, and many of them complain about the cost of
> 'rural water' which is much more expensive than 'city water'. I cannot
> believe there are places and communities so backward that septic tanks
> are allowed, except by default in small rural areas. But NYC? Not even
> in Chicago do you see that any longer.
Don't bet money on that!
There are houses on well and septic tank within 1/2 mile of Golf Mill shopping center. Properties selling in the $150-200K price-range.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Okay, I won't bet any money on that. Actually, I want to thank you for giving me _yet another reason_ why I would not want to any longer live in the Chicago area. A two hundred thousand dollar home with inadequate plumbing arrangements is really sad. I guess they can get that much money for those houses since 'everyone knows' that life in a big city is such a wonderful, great thing. After all, why would anyone want to live in a small rural community when you could instead have a bunch of corrupted politicians in charge of things, a high crime rate, etc. Not only could I _not_ afford to live in a two hundred thousand dollar home, nor even rent a tiny room in such, I certainly would not want to be where someone like the inerrant Mayor Daley was always breathing on me. I can only hope the dorks there were smart enough to figure out to draw their drinking water _upstream_ from wherever they put their outhouse or septic tank. PAT]