The High Cost of Conservation

The lesson this week is this: Conservation AKA using less is very costly. So much so that the lower income brackets, thirty thousand and less before taxes a year house hold income are the lessor income ones, are unable to afford the cost. And do not even think about conservation. What so they conserve exactly, and what if something breaks.
Low flush toilets cost around a hundred bucks, which takes three or so months to come up with. Do they go in the years, next door, a bucket that they dump down the storm drain at night, what?

Many comminutes have nice little laws that force conservation. Less lawn watering, native low use shrubs, drip irrigation, a stepped water use table so if a threshold is breached one must sell his kidney and or child to pay the bill and no "you can’t do payments, we will just send this to collection".

In some communities they "allow" a replacement with like for like. For instance if the house came with a hot water heater that holds 40 gallons they you can replace with the same 40 gallon hot water heater. No fee if you do it but if a plumber does it then town hall wants 20 bucks, the plumber wants three hundred and the tank costs two hundred and ninety optional delivery costs sixty bucks. Total cost if a plumber does it runs around four hundred nineteen bucks depending on costs.

However if you want to install one of those "on demand tankless" hot water heaters then town hall gets eighty bucks at least. Inquiring at city hall will get you different answers depending on the person that you call, at least in Portland Oregon. And in Portland Oregon there is no way to guarantee those once you are placed on hold you will ever connect with anyone. Let’s just say don’t use a cell phone. Your town may be different.

Seems to me that if the various forms of government in this country were actually interested in saving the salmon, saving the trees, saving the planet for pet’s sake. Then tankless hot water heaters, low gas mileage cars, solar cells, low flush toilets etc. Would be free for everyone rich to poor and back again.


That’s how I see it.

Egor