water meter
water meter
During the 19th century, the relationship with water in cities was transformed: if pipes had been serving buildings for a very long time, it was the installation of networks of watertight pipes and taps that allowed the generalisation of the service, home.
Then we were able to install water meters, which gradually detached water from its character as a public or common good (common pool resource).
Water has thus become a domestic or industrial consumer good. This transformation is almost complete in Europe and other developed countries, but not quite:
there are still places where the population still uses private wells, rainwater cisterns; it is sometimes grouped around small common supply systems where water is still paid for on a flat-rate basis.
According to supposedly fair rules but unrelated to the volume consumed; in many cities in Europe and the eastern United States, there is only one meter per building.
This is now being debated: some want each household to have its meter, even in collective housing or at the bottom of hamlets.
Conversely, in many developing countries, the water meter is often rejected, even destroyed, as a sign of an unbearable “commodification”. So much passion around such a banal technical object!
It is also the debate around the sale of water to its consumers (commodification) that has drawn attention to the water meter.
But what is a meter if not the technical object allowing the transaction of the sale of drinking water? But the cost of managing the meter and billing raises questions: how detailed should you go?
There is no general history of water meters, let alone taps. We are not going to do it here, but to offer explanations for the fact that there are no meters in some developed countries, meters at the foot of the building in others, and meters per dwelling elsewhere.
First of all, it is likely that the water service owes something to the gas industry, which needed to seal its networks for good safety reasons!
Gas meters would predate water meters by twenty years (1830 versus 1850).
And besides, in several countries, engineering associations have long remained common for water and gas.At that time, water networks were already expanding in England, and costs were generally covered by flat rates, or even by local taxes linked to the rental value of the properties served.
One may wonder whether it was not because the service had developed sufficiently before the invention of meters that they were not installed afterwards, although the networks inside homes were then all equipped with faucets closing.
It is likely that we first imagined bringing water near the home by a running water fountain, for example in the courtyards of buildings, and this by mimicry of the public supply of the time.
The water was constantly flowing, so why count it? This relationship with water has remained dominant in the culture of the Common-wealth countries.
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