WATER BILLS GOING UP AGAIN

From 1st March there will be big increases in the cost of water and sewerage. I am not sure if I am reading this  completely correctly, but so far as I can tell from the official document - domestic users:

Per cubic metre up from €0.3318 to €0.3658 - an increase of just over 10%
Standing charge up from €2.40 to €4.50 per month

Resíduos Sólidos - fixed charge up from €2.50 to €4.0 per month
consumer charge up from €0.42 to €0.5268
Aguas Residuals if my eyes are correct down from 0.4862 to 0.2634 but ??
Fixed charge €4 per month up from €1 per month.

If anyone cares to read the official document the charges are on page 4

http://www.cm-albufeira.pt/NR/rdonlyres/DFF603B9-FD29-44AE-BD1D-6FD18DAF9551/0/Reg12_2012_Tarif_Abast_Agua2012.pdf

You will recall that domestic water charges were increased by about 500% in July 2010.

Have a nice day.

Talk about trying to get the Country out of recession.  They (like most other Government's) are clueless!

They were indeed very cheap until a couple of years ago. A big programme of building of new reservoirs and replacing old water mains is no doubt responsible for the higher costs .

Meanwhile water mains still burst - this mess has been let at the corner of Rua Samora Barros near Albufera Jardim.

That was being repaired yesterday morning ( at last )  when I passed. 

I have a friend who has a shop which is approx 35 sq metres. She has a toilet and one cold water tap. For the privilege of having these wonderful facilities she has just received her water bill for 27.54 euros. When she first opened the shop  in 2006 the bill was 5 euros per month. It then went up to 13.62 and then to 15.87. She didn't receive a bill for January and February and had to go to the Camara to pay. Because the bill for January hadn't been paid she had to pay double. It seems that the Camara are out to finish off businesses. How can people continue to trade when fundamental thing like water is so expensive. What can the ordinary person do apart from shut up and pay up. Time to take a stand? As said further up on thios thread, no wonder people are taking to the streets. There will come a time when people will say enough is enough and goodness knows what will happen then.

They could try fining people for parking like a******es, it would raise a fortune in a very short time, they just don't seem to want to...

I had a bill yesterday. It was only for the three big standing charges. So where's my bill for consumption and sewerage? If you have a place here, watch the bills carefully.

Here's our experience -

Since 2002 until February this year we paid €6.04 per month - surprisingly it's never varied during that time, despite varied useage & despite the fact that we know that our meter has been read regularly & frequently during this time - we always leave the cap on the meter down & everytime we come back the cap is left up.

Interestingly though, our bills have never shown any usage details - it's a 1 bed apartment & we spend about 4 months a year here evenly spread over the 12 months in 5 chunks of either 2/3/4 weeks at a time so useage varies quite a bit month by month.

Now, from March 2012, my bill has gone up to €12.77 a month (a 100%+ rise).

The current bill shows 3 "items" -

1  Tarifa de Conserv. Aguas Res €4.00 (previously €1.00)
2. Tarifa de Conserv. Res. Solidos €4.00 (previously €2.50)
3. Tarifa de disponibildade €4.50 (previously €2.40)

+IVA @ €0.27 (previously €0.14)

In all honesty, we're not too bothered regarding the amount as to us it still seems like a good deal for water compared to what we pay in the UK, hose pipe bans & all, even taking into account that as far as we're concerned, we still need to buy bottled water for drinking.

The annoying thing is that we haven't received any notification or reason of this increase, it's just happened.