That is actually a simple problem to solve. You charge new customers
the cost of extending service / capacity to them. If a developer
wants to put in 50 houses a couple miles out from the current
termination point of the service, you charge the developer the full
cost of bringing in the services. They in turn will fold that into
the resale cost of the houses. If folks won't buy at that price,
smart developers won't build.
The waste is folks using utilities inefficiently because there is no
economic incentive to do otherwise.
Matthew
On Feb 3, 2009, at 10:48 AM, Snyder, Mark (IT-EI) wrote:
It is more complicated than that. Funding must be identified for
future
capacity as well as current or new users will be shut out. So we
added
a modest increase in the new capacity of the new plant. Also, when
the
state and federal government shut down those grant funds, they left
municipal systems hanging out there, most of them not even aware of
it.
This is a recipe for public health disasters. If those municipal
systems fail while the operators chase funding/financing sources, many
people will be at risk of some serious diseases. Finally, what
predictable waste did I report?
Thank you,
Mark Snyder
-----Original Message-----
It reads to me that the problem was as you identified it: "Connection
and availability fees were too low."
If you charge what it actually costs then polities have a greater
incentive to build only what they need, and users have an incentive to
be much more frugal in their use. If you subsidize costs, you get
predictable waste.
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