My dad had a well at once house he had. Something broke on it, and the city (suburbs, but still) stepped in and forced him to pay several thousand dollars to have excavators come out and hook the house up to city water. They wouldn’t let him fix the well.
Edit: I think the pump gave out, and the city stepped in because zoning laws changed since the house was built. The well was grandfathered in to old zoning laws until the pump broke.
Anecdote about living on a well. We live in a new house in the New England. The cost of our water is the cost of the electricity to run the water pump. It’s not very expensive.
The best part /s about having a well is when there’s a bad storm that knocks out power, we lose water.
When neighbors in the area know a storm is coming, we have to take steps like filling our bathtubs with water to use for flushing our toilets and stocking up on gallons of water from the grocery store.
I grew up with a well, I also grew up without indoor plumbing, and my father still relies on that well. We eventually installed a manual pump, but at some point the electric pump was replaced and the manual was never reinstalled.
Did that hole in the ground spontaneously appear of its own accord, or do you think it might be more likely that a professional was paid to do that, along with installing electrical equipment in the hole to bring the water to the surface for use?
I’ll bite: Arkansas (and probably some other states that I’m less aware of)
It’s an old law from the westward expansion days which says that any establishment that sells food and/or drink is not allowed to charge for the serving of water itself. Some businesses get around this by automatically upcharging for a larger size than their “standard” drink serving size (read: anything beyond “small”), or by charging for the cup, but the vast majority still follow the spirit of the law and don’t charge for water because of the cultural momentum.
You’re still right, though. There are costs associated with acquiring and maintaining a supply of potable water, so this law effectively forces businesses to eat the cost of the water they serve to customers. However, that’s such a small percentage of a restaurant’s water use that it’s trivial to cover by other means.
Anywhere diarrhea isn’t the norm. This means well water (holy shit is that a lot of digging) or treated water. Either way that shit costs money. The alternative is boiling. Tea and alcohol were popular for centuries for a reason. Clean Water is something of a modern luxury.
Tap water is free in Montreal, Canada. You pay for a small fixed rate along with your electricity bill, but the water pipe network is so old and leaky they never actually installed meters.
I keep seeing an ad that starts off with “the best things in life are free! Air… Water…” And I’m like “where the fuck are you that water is free?”
Somewhere someone has a well?
My dad had a well at once house he had. Something broke on it, and the city (suburbs, but still) stepped in and forced him to pay several thousand dollars to have excavators come out and hook the house up to city water. They wouldn’t let him fix the well.
Edit: I think the pump gave out, and the city stepped in because zoning laws changed since the house was built. The well was grandfathered in to old zoning laws until the pump broke.
Anecdote about living on a well. We live in a new house in the New England. The cost of our water is the cost of the electricity to run the water pump. It’s not very expensive. The best part /s about having a well is when there’s a bad storm that knocks out power, we lose water. When neighbors in the area know a storm is coming, we have to take steps like filling our bathtubs with water to use for flushing our toilets and stocking up on gallons of water from the grocery store.
I grew up with a well, I also grew up without indoor plumbing, and my father still relies on that well. We eventually installed a manual pump, but at some point the electric pump was replaced and the manual was never reinstalled.
Did that hole in the ground spontaneously appear of its own accord, or do you think it might be more likely that a professional was paid to do that, along with installing electrical equipment in the hole to bring the water to the surface for use?
Well water ain’t free either.
I’ll bite: Arkansas (and probably some other states that I’m less aware of)
It’s an old law from the westward expansion days which says that any establishment that sells food and/or drink is not allowed to charge for the serving of water itself. Some businesses get around this by automatically upcharging for a larger size than their “standard” drink serving size (read: anything beyond “small”), or by charging for the cup, but the vast majority still follow the spirit of the law and don’t charge for water because of the cultural momentum.
You’re still right, though. There are costs associated with acquiring and maintaining a supply of potable water, so this law effectively forces businesses to eat the cost of the water they serve to customers. However, that’s such a small percentage of a restaurant’s water use that it’s trivial to cover by other means.
Anywhere diarrhea isn’t the norm. This means well water (holy shit is that a lot of digging) or treated water. Either way that shit costs money. The alternative is boiling. Tea and alcohol were popular for centuries for a reason. Clean Water is something of a modern luxury.
Tap water is free in Montreal, Canada. You pay for a small fixed rate along with your electricity bill, but the water pipe network is so old and leaky they never actually installed meters.