this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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Water companies in England and Wales explore ‘surge pricing’ during drought (www.theguardian.com)
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[–] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I'm kind of curious how it compares to some of the cities here in the US.

Thames Water, London, UK

https://www.thameswater.co.uk/help/account-and-billing/understand-your-bill/metered-customers

We’ll send you a bill every six months. Your bill will show charges for every cubic metre (m3) of water used.

One cubic metre equals 1,000 litres which is an estimated 25 quick showers. It costs £2.7346 per m3 for clean water and £1.4721 per m3 for wastewater as of 1 April 2026.

Fixed charges for 2026-27

Once we’ve calculated your clean water and wastewater charges, we'll add fixed charges. These cover our essential costs, such as pipe maintenance and bill and payment processing.

Type Fixed charge Fixed charge with surface water drainage rebate
Water £66.87 Not applicable
Wastewater £128.13 £80.43

San Diego, California: a city located in a semi-arid region which depends partly on desalinated water.

https://www.sandiego.gov/public-utilities/customer-support/water-billing-rates

Each HCF equals 748.05 gallons.

The monthly charges for a typical single-family domestic customer are:

Base fee: $35.53
0 - 10 HCF used are billed at $8.51 per HCF.
11 - 22 HCF used are billed at $9.50 per HCF.
Each HCF used after the initial 22 HCF is billed at $11.89 per HCF.

https://www.sandiego.gov/public-utilities/customer-support/sewer-billing-rates

Single-Family Residential Customer

Base Sewer Fee for Two Months $22.56
Sewer (rate per HCF**) $5.92

Maximum Fee: Base + Sewer (fee capped at 20 HCF/month) $259.36

New Orleans, Lousiana: a city located at the mouth of the Mississippi, as London is located at the mouth of the Thames:

https://www.swbno.org/CustomerService/RatesFeesAndCharges

These guys charge a fixed fee based on the size of the meter. It looks like residential meters normally are either 5/8 inch, 3/4 inch, or 1 inch.

Water monthly fixed fee:

Meter Size Rate ($)
5/8 8.69
3/4 10.64
1 13.50

Water usage fee:

Usage level Rate per 1,000 gallons ($)
First 3,000 gallons 5.80
Next 17,000 gallons 9.87
Next 980,000 gallons 7.76
Over 1,000,000 gallons 6.50

Sewage monthly fixed fee:

Meter Size Rate ($)
5/8 24.87
3/4 35.40
1 50.38

Sewage usage fee:

Per 1,000 Gallons: 8.66

At a current currency conversion rate of $1.3565 for £1, and with a cubic meter being 0.35314667 HCF and 0.26417205 thousand-gallons:

Six month residential water cost:

Source Fixed Six-month Water Fee (£) Per cubic meter (£)
Thames Water 66.87 2.73
City of San Diego (starting rate) 78.58 2.22
City of San Diego (maximum rate) 78.58 3.10
City of New Orleans (lowest rate) 38.43 1.23
City of New Orleans (maximum rate) 59.71 1.27

Six month residential wastewater cost

(for Thames Water, taking into account the rebate, and for San Diego, disregarding the limit that may be charged a customer):

Source Fixed Six-month Wastewater Fee (£) Per cubic meter(£)
Thames Water 80.43 1.47
City of San Diego 49.89 1.54
City of New Orleans (minimum rate) 110.00 1.69
City of New Orleans (maximum rate) 222.83 1.69

So, looking at that, a few things stand out. First, London is an old city, and I'd vaguely imagine has a lot of elderly sewers and such that might cost a lot to maintain. Going into this, I had guessed that infrastructure was maybe where any major Thames Water cost was coming from. But actually, the fixed sewage costs aren't that much higher than San Diego (a relatively-young city), and are considerably lower than New Orleans' fixed sewage costs. So unless, for some reason, the customer fee structure doesn't reflect the cost structure for one or more of the organizations, that kills that theory.

And the Thames Water per-usage sewer rates are lower than the rates in both American cities.

Fixed water rates are in-between New Orleans and San Diego. I'd expect that some of San Diego's fixed costs need to go to things like the San Diego Aqueduct system, to bring water from the closest sources of surface water, which isn't something that'd be needed in London. But I'd also imagine that London has its own complexities, like older infrastructure.

The per-unit water usage rates for Thames Water, on the other hand, are relatively high

towards the upper end of San Diego's per-unit usage rates, and as I said, San Diego relies in part on desalinated water, which should be more-expensive as a source than surface water (and which London could certainly hypothetically avail itself of). Thames Water per-unit water rates are also much higher than those in New Orleans. It does seem to me that there's plausibly a way to get per-usage rates down for Thames Water.