Many years ago the small town I grew up in had it's own water treatment plant with plenty of capacity. The village/township about 10 miles away started having developers come in an create the standard suburban cookie cutter sprawl.

In the process the developers had the village get tapped into the town's plant and then ran lines from there to the developments instead of drilling their wells.

The houses with wells and septic tanks on the route from town had to pay $2,500 each for a tapping fee to have the pipe run across their front lawns. Some were actually forced to replumb just because.

Luckily there were a few smart guys out there to go back to the wells. For some reason their water bills have always been $0.

The government rarely knows best.

City utilities sell less water (or power), city utilities make less money...

prolly not the chickie in Fl. but there are other places in the US, particularly in the west, where the water is actually owed to another state. So...they sometimes don't allow you to collect rainwater, because they've already owed that runoff to another state. When rivers no longer reach the ocean [like the Colorado] that water is being used in Phx, and LA... and if you keep it from getting to the river by collecting it, well California can sue...

So, the local govt. makes it against code to keep the water.

Like a lot of things, grids don't work if people start opting out, en masse. Where they would ignore 1 or two cranks who are living off the grid in shacks... now that it is becoming easier to do expect govt to stop allowing it, 'till there's a big lawsuit.

Interestingly in Spain, some of the people who went all in for solar, taking advantage of the tax credits, and selling their excess to the electric utilities are now in a pickle.

Turns out it's unsustainable, and so suddenly they won't buy the excess, and are in fact charging a hookup fee.

If it's too good to be true? it is.

"Why she's not permitted to capture and use rainwater in a drought-stricken region is anybody's guess."

Backflow, fireflow, standing water needs to be treated before it can be stored. There are valid public health and engineering reasons behind what may seem to be arbitrary rules designed to "discourage an interesting lifestyle". Really designed more to discourage third world construction standards. I think better examples come from solar interconnect rules where you seem to have more profit-driven rule making.

Trash pickup is mandatory in most built-up areas. This seems to me to be a pretty obvious standard to avoid unsanitary conditions but I suppose you spin it as an attempt to encourage a wasteful consumerist lifestyle if you want.

"City utilities sell less water (or power), city utilities make less money..."

That's too simple and misses a big part of the picture. City utility owns facilities that depreciate, require maintenance, and must be oversized to accommodate all owners who have the right to connect. City utility must bill those depreciation and maintenance costs to the property owners and tenants who benefit from the facilities, including those owners who choose not to capitalize on the facilities until a future date, such as this one. It's part of the trade-off since the property owner retains the right to capitalize on those facility improvements at a later date, for instance by selling the house to someone who does want to connect to the city water system.

Your utility bill has three essential components: Capital costs, O+M, and consumptive costs. Opting out only cuts consumptive costs and on a large enough scale O+M, you still have to have a pricing scheme to collect the capital costs. I think that is what is not very obvious to the reporter and homeowner in this example.

I suspect she shouldn't live in a city.

Girls that want to wear burkas shouldn't apply for jobs at Hollister.

People that don't want to pay for or use any of the infrastructure improvements communities (or their elected officials) vote for should probably move.

No, I truly don't want a neighbor living right next to me that doesn't have plumbing or water hookups or want to pay for garbage service. Or that uses temporary propane fixtures as her main source of heat and light. And actively avoiding safer approved ways of achieving these things.

Sounds unsanitary, unsafe and an eyesore.

And just because she is the uber-granola and does right, doesn't mean the folks down the street will.

I can't imagine how many people in Santa Monica or Venice would live off the grid if they could, and how few of them would do it right.

If that is the lifestyle she wants, she should find a rural property where that is a more reasonable choice.

(I do find the Colorado water restrictions very odd, that you do not even own the water that falls on your real estate.)

This article has such a biased spin on it that the author is doing a disservice.

There are, in fact, very valid reason for having building and utilities standards.

And, no, it isn't about being against an "interesting lifestyle." Boy, was that line a crock of BS!

Yep, Jerry, is right, this lady should not live in a city near neighbors.

Even if she is "doing it right," if she is allowed to "live off the grid" there will be others who will claim the same right, and before you know if you will have a MOVE* situation in your formerly livable neighborhood.

*MOVE was an African-American liberation movement in Philly that believed in getting back to nature, albeit in the middle of the city! They tried to compost their garbage and human waste in their yards rather than use the city sewers. They considered it wrong to use pest control so that rats and cockroaches were a serious problem for their neighbors, not just themselves. The situation got so out of hand that the Philly police dropped a bomb on their house (which was too strong of a response; but, that goes to show how bad it was) and ended up burning down the whole block.

No, it would be better to enforce building and health codes now, before it gets too bad.

And as a former real estate agent Robin should have known better!

(I do find the Colorado water restrictions very odd, that you do not even own the water that falls on your real estate.)

Posted by: jerry at February 27, 2014 11:56 AM

In dry country where you need irrigation to grow anything, including hay for your cattle, land, without viable water rights, is virtually useless.

The water rights in most of the west, is therefore based on first rights along a given water way, rather than the guy at the top of the stream gets to take everything, leaving nothing for those people downstream who may have an earlier recorded right to the water.

The water shed (snow in the mountains) is the largest part of what ends up in those streams. If the guy who owned the ski resort up there could build a dam and keep it all, what do you think would happen to the flow rate, especially in a dry year?

That said, I agree with most of what you said. This woman needs to move.

She is using the sewer system, and water and trash are usually bundled with that. Even if you dont use it, you are going to pay the base rate, and the city has a right to require you to do that for a number of health and safety reasons.

Just like they have the right to spend your tax money on that public library you never use....

My ancestors all gave up propane lanterns when the REA ran power lines out to the ranches. There were good technological reasons for that.

If she could do some analysis on the cost of processing propane ( a byproduct of the natural gas, and petroleum industry) she might realize, it is not a particularly environmentally friendly, or a less costly alternative to power plant produced electricity.

"No, I truly don't want a neighbor living right next to me" Jerry

As long as this doesn't affect you, is it your call?

What happens when they tell you how and when you can paint your house, and in what color? Do they get to come IN your house and tell you is isn't clean?

The line being crossed here is FORCED buy-in to municipal services, that aren't required by a specific code.

Do you have to pay for garbage pickup from a specific company, when you just take your trash yourself? My mom used to have to do this... even though she owned a store, so going and putting a bag of trash in her store's dumpster was just as easy. Eventually it was discovered that a number of people on the town council were relatives of the guy owning the garbage collector service.

Huh, who'da thunk it.

This goes right back to the idea that the government should leave you alone, UNLESS you are having a bad effect on someone else, and I don't mean they think your house is painted ugly.

You buy into a homeonwner's association voluntarily, by buying a house there, this I can understand...

But the other is dangerously close to coercion, ESPECIALLY when they try to evict, until a judge says, no, you have no right to do that, stupid.

The main mistake of this woman [she has made plenty] is telling anyone. Also, there is the realization that some fees are part of the common good, and you just have to pay them, to keep everything going.

Which is why my electricity costs about $10/month, PLUS roughly $20 in fees for... stuff, I guess. Not anything I consume, just "fees, taxes and misc." I could rail about that 'till I'm blue in the face, but it's a waste of time. I'll call it a donation.

Jerry: "No, I truly don't want a neighbor living right next to me that doesn't have plumbing or water hookups or want to pay for garbage service. Or that uses temporary propane fixtures as her main source of heat and light. And actively avoiding safer approved ways of achieving these things."

This ruling doesn't make her use those things, it only makes her pay for the connections she's not using. I.e. it doesn't solve your busy body complaint anyway.

But the other is dangerously close to coercion, ESPECIALLY when they try to evict, until a judge says, no, you have no right to do that, stupid.

Nah, She is using the sewer system, and unless she is illegally dumping, her trash makes it's way into the local landfill, especially if she is most likely dumping in someone else's dumpster at night.

Plenty of health and safety reasons to bundle water and sewer billing together.

Once you buy a house in a municipality, you are subject to their rules, whether they are HOA strict or not.
She needs to suck it up. MOVE in Philly was a really good analogy here.

My question is whether anyone would have the same view of a resident of Detroit where there are multiple blocks with no residents.

So a when a <weather event> comes through a person could be without utility or city services for days to weeks because they are an outlier by the definition of the disaster recovery process. No one plows the street for three days and the local utility company goes a week to replace power lines. Yet the person is within the city limits of Detroit.

For that matter look at the recovery process post-Sandy in the seaward communities of New York and New Jersey. Would you want your own solution or just wait for the net to come back?

"*MOVE was an African-American liberation movement in Philly that believed in getting back to nature, albeit in the middle of the city! They tried to compost their garbage and human waste in their yards rather than use the city sewers. They considered it wrong to use pest control so that rats and cockroaches were a serious problem for their neighbors, not just themselves. The situation got so out of hand that the Philly police dropped a bomb on their house (which was too strong of a response; but, that goes to show how bad it was) and ended up burning down the whole block."

Posted by: Charles at February 27, 2014 1:14 PM

That bomb killed 11 people, including children, set fire to four city blocks, and left hundreds of people homeless.

I think that only goes to show how bad Mayor Wilson Goode was.

The group of miscreants they were trying to remove assaulted people and regularly shouted slogans outside at all hours, in addition to composting food and human waste in the yard.