At present, buildings that do not have meters installed or scheduled to be installed are subject to a 100percentt surcharge on water and sewage bills.
For now, Zebuhr is sticking to his belief that there are endless applications for a low-cost water distiller, from the industrialized West, where a household device can pay for itself in water- and sewage-bill savings, to the Third World, where the widespread lack of safe drinking water is perhaps the biggest threat to human health.
The combined budget of the two Great Neck plants is about $3.5 million a year, so a county sewage treatment bill of about $5 million would represent a substantial increase in the cost of waste treatment for residents of the Great Neck peninsula.
But she realizes that finding work locally is probably not an option, especially with a $1,200 mortgage payment and $400 more in water, sewage and utility bills.
And, look, where else in the city these days can you see immortals like Klaus Nomi, Sylvester, Dick Jewell and Raw Sewage on the same bill?
About half of the methane produced by the city's plants is already used to meet about 20 percent of the energy demands of the city's 14 sewage plants, whose electric bills run to a total of about $50 million a year.
These assessments, about 20percentt of most homeowners' tax bills, cover water, sewage, sanitation, fire and police services.
And taxpayers will inevitably question why they should foot the bill for a sewage-treatment plant on the Upper East Side when it could be placed in a far less expensive neighborhood.
But the city's Department of Environmental Protection expressed concern about New Yorkers' having to foot some of the bill for stopping the sewage and rainwater overflow that empties into the canal and other local waterways after storms.
