Going to the plant south of town, on my first trip for a water haul, I counted 18 vehicles, going for or having gotten, a load of effluent water.<\/p>\n
My grandson and namesake, thrilled over his brand-new learner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s permit, took the wheel, while my wife, Bonnie, and I went along for the ride. Arthur\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father recently purchased a 275-gallon container, which surprisingly took only about a minute to fill. We saw pickups the size of ours, some with trailers, as well as huge tankers.<\/p>\n
The water-distribution enterprise appears to have caught on, and one session of soaking our own used-to-be lawn convinces me it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard work. We drained the tank by gravity \u00e2\u20ac\u201d no fancy pump to help out. Regardless, our patch of God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Little Acre belched and uttered a dry, wry \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Thank you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Being in the water-hauling business is expensive. A round trip to the treatment plant consumes gas and time, and people I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve talked to mention having to rush just to make four deliveries a day. Unless someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s willing to pay big bucks for a load of water, it seems highly unlikely anyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s making a lot of money by delivering it.<\/p>\n
Some people are collecting water from their morning showers as well. We wonder how many such showers it takes for a person to water an average lawn for free. Of course, the cost of muscle-relaxing balms needs to be factored in.<\/p>\n
When the treated wastewater went on sale, I sensed some bureaucratic chiding of those who have invested in containers to distribute water. The implication was that people ought not profit from this new venture, given the then-low price of effluent. But few pickups in the area are powerful enough to tote more than 250 gallons at a time, so the full 1,000-gallon quota for $1.25 would necessitate making four trips each day.<\/p>\n
And gas prices? Well, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still higher than the recycled water.<\/p>\n
At first, when I read about 1,000 gallons for $1.25, I wondered how officials arrived at that rate. Would a buck and a quarter even begin to cover the hourly wages for the men at the plant? And few of the buyers would be able to carry off their money\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth in one trip.<\/p>\n
This week, the rates are up \u00e2\u20ac\u201d considerably.<\/p>\n
Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s say one wants to buy only 100 gallons: under the old rate, that would be only twelve-and-a-half cents. The new rate that just kicked in, is about 12 times that amount, or $1.42 per 100 gallons. The factor of 12 times the original rate is even more than the 500 percent increase in water rates that the city seemed to think was probable, several months ago.<\/p>\n
A call to the city utilities department revealed some interesting rate structures. Fifty cents now buys 35 gallons of water. But why 35? Do water buyers generally ask for that particular quantity? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s simpler to sell 100 gallons for $1.42.<\/p>\n
Reclaimed water is still cheaper than milk, gas or bottled water, but please don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t try to drink that effluent stuff.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
I visited briefly with a former neighbor from Pecos Street, Josephine Larra\u00c3\u00b1aga Guerin, whom I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen since childhood. She told me it was sometimes necessary for her to run to a dictionary while reading Work of Art. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great! I try to introduce at least one new word per column. And besides, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good for the mind and also helps provide cardio-vascular benefits.<\/p>\n
On that note, as we approach the Fourth of July weekend, I hope the days of celebration become imbriferous for Josephine and all of you. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happened several times before.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Sunday morning, our family joined many others to watch the annual Storrie Lake Triathlon, which included a mile swim, a 24-mile bike race and a 10-K run. About 100 people completed the course, including six from this area: Albert Bourbon, Joe Whiteman, Joe Wickert, Richard Rougeux, Kaaren Rougeux and Adam Brister.<\/p>\n
Bourbon, 52, came out 40th overall. Some participants said that the wind that kicked up around 10 a.m., around the time most competitors were on their bicycles, made the return from the Sapello area quite difficult.<\/p>\n
We watched our daughter-in-law, Heather Trujillo, from Albuquerque, compete the course. She, along with our son Ben, seems to find some kind of competition to enter almost every weekend.<\/p>\n
We believe the triathlon is a great event. Cars and spectators filled the park.<\/p>\n
But really, can park officials come up with a fair and consistent policy on spectator admission? Some in the crowd appear to have gotten in to the park by simply announcing they came to watch the events. But others had to pay the standard $5 entry fee, regardless of their reasons for attending.<\/p>\n
Spectators, there for only a few hours, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly place burdens on the state park. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re there to watch, not to picnic, camp or go boating, fishing or sailing.<\/p>\n
So which is it? Though $5 is by no means a staggering amount, it would be helpful to know the ground rules \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and to know they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re being applied consistently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Going to the plant south of town, on my first trip for a water haul, I counted 18 vehicles, going for or having gotten, a load of effluent water. My grandson and namesake, thrilled over his brand-new learner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s permit, took the wheel, while my wife, Bonnie, and I went along for the ride. Arthur\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions\/777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}