Water prices rising, worldwide.

• Position: Ecology

The price of water is increasing--in some places dramatically--throughout the world. Over the past five years, municipal rates have risen by an average of 27% in the U.S., 32% in the United Kingdom, 45% in Australia, 50% in South Africa, and 58% in Canada, reports Edwin H. Clark II in the Eco-Economy Update Series from Earth Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.

A survey of 14 countries indicates that average prices range from 66 cents per cubic meter in the U.S. up to $2.25 in Denmark and Germany. Yet, consumers rarely pay the actual cost of water. In fact, many governments practically (and sometimes literally) give water away for nothing. The average American household consumes about 480 cubic meters (127,400 gallons) during a year. Homeowners in Washington, D.C., pay about $350 (72 cents per cubic meter) for that amount. Making the same purchase from a vendor in the slums of Guatemala City would cost more than $1,700.

Water prices largely are determined by three factors: cost of transport from its source to the user, total demand, and price subsidies. Treatment to remove contaminants also can add to the expense. The cost of transporting water is based on how far--and how high--it has to go. Growing cities and towns may have to venture hundreds of miles to find the water needed to satisfy their increasing thirst. California cities long have imported water from that distance, while China is constructing three canals--two of which are more than 1,000 miles long--to transfer water from the Yangtze River to Beijing and other rapidly growing areas in the northern provinces, notes Clark.

Pumping water out of the ground or over land to higher elevations is energy-intensive. Pumping 480 cubic meters of water a height of 100 meters requires some 200 kilowatt-hours of electricity. At a price of 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, the cost is $20--and that does not include the pump, well, and piping. One-hundred meters is not an unusual lift for wells tapping falling supplies of groundwater. In northern China, lifts of 1,000 meters sometimes are required. Mexico City, at an elevation of 2,239 meters, has to pump parts of its water supply over 1,000 meters up a mountain. The operating costs alone amount to $128,500,000 annually Pumping this water requires more energy than is consumed overall in the nearby city of Puebla, home to 8,300,000 people. Amman, Jordan, faces a similar problem related to delivering water to higher elevations, Clark points out.

In most...