Punished for doing the right thing

Athens-Clarke County, as a community, uses 3.6 million gallons of water per day less than it did three years ago. This is largely due to a combination of restrictions, market forces (i.e. why garden during a drought) and voluntary conservation efforts in order to meet a common challenge.

This good behavior, however, has resulted in the Athens-Clarke County Public Utilities Department wanting to raise rates by 13 to 15 percent on users starting this summer.

Now - leaving aside the fundamental problems associated with rewarding good behavior with punitive measures - if I recall correctly from my Economics 101 class, if you raise the price on a good, there's a pretty decent chance you'll see a drop in demand.

I get that they owe $16 million per year for selling some bonds so they could upgrade some sewer facilities, but I'm still struggling to figure out why they want the people who conserved water - who did so after the same people asking for this rate hike requested them to ramp up conservation - to pay more.

If I was a commissioner, quite frankly, I'd look at Bob Snipes and Gary Duck and say 'I respect the predicament you're in, but this is your problem, not mine ... you asked for us to conserve water, and it sucks it's hurting your bottom line, but we need some better options and more open-minded thinking than what you're giving us.'