Down the drain

Just looked at my combined gas and water bill that’s due the end of the month.  Looked at the water portion because I keep scratching my head wondering how in the hell two people and two cats can use so much water.

Water Charges $28.44
Sales Tax $1.99
Sewer Charges (4.969 CCF) $44.40
Total $74.83

So, OK, I get that the governor has to take his bite.*

BUT TO DUMP THE WATER COSTS NEARLY TWICE WHAT IT COSTS TO GET THE WATER IN THE FIRST PLACE?**

And the only work you fuckers have done on our sewers in this neighborhood in 50+ years was to get rid of the nasty old lift station that you didn’t need in the first place, and that was at least 25 years ago.

Yeah, I get that this tax fee is an EPA mandate to TAX us (oh, excuse me, they call it a “user fee”) because the EPA also mandated that we get people off of septic systems and onto an actual sanitary sewer system in this county that doesn’t share space with the stormwater runoff and its associated sewers.  Of course we never had a septic system out here, been on city sewers from day one, but never mind that (and also never mind that it costs taxpayers on septic some horrific amount of money to connect to their new sewer systems once they’re installed on the backs of everyone else in the county).

By the way, speaking of stormwater runoff:

This is what our back yard looks like after pretty much any relatively-heavy rain.***  Yep, it’s supposed to be a swale****, got no argument about that; there’s a beehive drain to the left of the bottom picture that lets water into the storm sewer that eventually leads out into a big damn ditch about a quarter mile away.  But it would be nice if the city would spend some of that sweet storm sewer tax fee money on putting in a perforated tile under that swale so the damn water doesn’t pool like that.  I mean, the water table is only about 3 feet down anyway, this part of Indiana is basically a fucking swamp thanks to the last Ice Age’s glaciation, so what this means is that the ground is completely saturated when it gets like this.  I guess we should be happy that the street doesn’t flood halfway up the front yard like it did once, back in 1977.

PS:  Yes, our neighbor to the right is a fucking white-trash slob.  He had to replace his fence because it was falling apart and they have an above-ground pool.  So he put up the new fence inside of the old fence, removed the old fence panels, and left the old fence posts standing — two years ago.  I’m considering going out with the chain saw next spring, cutting them off, and heaving them over his fence.  But the fence line going up between him and the other neighbor at left is even worse — it’s crookeder than a dog’s hind leg.

PPS:  Neighbor to the left is maintaining an attractive nuisance with an unmaintained and unprotected trampoline, too.  It’s been there for at least thirty years and I’m sure it’s just waiting for a kid to jump on it and fall through because the canvas is rotten.

So much to bitch about, so little time.

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* Although if I were governor, I’d put out an executive order that commodities purchased from utilities would no longer be subject to sales tax — PARTICULARLY from utilities that are organized and operate as tax-exempt public trusts, as ours does.  And then I’d beat on the legislature to put that into law.  With actual beatings, if need be.  Preston Brooks was right, he just got violent in a bad cause.

** Yeah, I exaggerate, it’s only 156% more.  200% would be $56.88.  Sue me.

*** These particular pictures were taken back in July, during the 2017 “monsoon”.

**** Whatever spell-checker is running in Firefox, it doesn’t know how to spell “swale”.  I guess that’s too esoteric for it.