Who should pay for the price of water

Shall I join the crowd and have a rant about water? Minnie was kind enough to pose for me after all.

Cactus Kate is having a go at over priced bottled water and Oswald Bastable is pointing out water quality problems in Martinborough.

However I noticed that Wellington's water use and whether it should be metered is creating a bit of a storm in a tea cup.

"Two of Wellington's leaders are backing debate on a user-pays water system to reduce Wellingtonians' reckless consumption - now more than twice the national average.
Wellingtonians each use 400 litres of water a day compared with Aucklanders' 300 litres and a national average of 160 litres.
Experts say a lot of water is simply wasted watering gardens, cleaning cars, running taps or flushing toilets every time. Household water metering could reduce Wellingtonians' consumption by 100 litres a day."

Water user pays in the form of metering has been in place in the Auckland region for over 30 years. The cost is not prohibitive at $1.29 per thousand litres some of which is piped in from the Waikato River. That came to $170 in the last 6 monthly bill (132 kilolitres). We know we use more water than we should. Thanks to the bill we know exactly how much we are wasting, about 83 kilolitres, and partially corrected the issue by fixing the overflowing toilet cistern and putting a timer on the teenager's showers.

Easy.